And that’s how you know you’re in the forkin’ Good Place

I said I would show why it’s patently absurd. And I did. Absurdity comes in many forms, including systemic issues that require dramatic change

What’s your point? Cool story, still raped two women. Don’t put violent sex offenders with the demographic they victimized. Should lesbian sex offenders be incarcerated with other women? Probably not, right?

You’ve just made a great argument for why gendered prisons are a ridiculous notion in the first place, and why results-based decision making is more important than broad, impersonal classification-based decision making.

And that’s before we even talk about how the overwhelming majority of prisons in general are inhumane and ineffective at reducing crime.

Yup. Pretty much.

Let me turn that around on you:

Should a male-presenting, gay sex offender go to a male prison or female prison? What is the purpose of gendered prisons? What problem is it trying to solve? And why are we using gender for that instead of “likely victims of the incarcerated individual”?

Gendered prisons are a ridiculous notion that only exist because our prison system itself is completely fucked up, profit-driven, and inhumane. It produces worse outcomes than almost any other form of legal consequences except in extreme cases.

Yes. Or treat trans women as women. Because that’s what they are. Name a situation where you think this would be problematic and I’ll show you why it’s patently absurd.

Definitely seems likely!

PSA: While chewing plastic is usually benign, silly cat behavior it can sometimes indicate something is off/wrong

Pulled from Purina’s info page on plastic-chewing:

• Although unusual, diseases like hyperthyroidism in cats, feline diabetes, anemia or dental issues might cause a cat to chew on plastic.

• Stress or anxiety can cause cats to show changes in their behavior and chewing plastic can be one of many signs that your cat is feeling anxious

• It is natural for cats to eat things that they can gnaw and chew. If they do not have this in their diet or provided in appropriate enrichment opportunities, they might be feeling the need to exercise their teeth and jaws on inappropriate items.

• Many unusual behaviors are driven by pain – and chewing, gnawing, and eating often inappropriate things can be one of them

• Cats can show compulsive cat behavior patterns, similar to OCD (obsessive-compulsive disorder) in humans.

• Your cat might be telling you that they’re lacking some nutrients by biting plastic. If they feel like they’re missing out on something, they could resort to biting and chewing on other things

Learned this lesson the hard way once, so spreading the knowledge just in case :)

Called this a while ago https://urusai.social/@neatchee/112255667073894754

It shouldn’t be that confusing, considering this is literally the challenge lawmakers (honest ones, as rare as they are) face.

There’s a great blog post by Neil Gaiman (despite recent revelations about his misconduct) that talks about “why we must defend icky speech”.

Long story short, the law is a blunt instrument. If you cannot clearly and accurately define the terms being used in the language of the law then you wind up with a law that can be applied beyond the intended scope. Like when you write laws about freedom of religion and then wind up with The Satanic Temple erecting statues of Baphomet in court houses. Or banning the Bible from library because it contains depictions of violence and sexual deviancy or promiscuity

These issues aren’t just academic. They have real-world consequences. Like, there have literally been legal rulings made based on the presence or absence of an Oxford comma

Is that kind of pedantry useful to the average conversation? No, of course not. But there are people trying to make laws that target women, or trans women, and if they can’t accurately define what a woman is then the law can be used to target people they didn’t want targeted.

Which is one of many reasons why trying to target trans folks with legal authority is a fool’s errand

Another non-blahaj here to say FUCK YEAH, Ada.

Deplatforming works. Demanding civility from people under attack by disingenuous, insincere “intellectuals” is so much more than just tone policing; it’s direct enablement of disenfranchisement and allowing the spread of harm.

It’s easy to be bad. It’s hard to be good. When bad people are allowed to express their evil ideologies, it is much easier for people to pick up the evil than for the righteous to defend the good.

We cannot be tolerant of intolerance.

So, again, FUCK YEAH, Ada. You rock for protecting your users AND the rest of the world by contributing to the deplatforming of bigots.

Nailed it. This was a perfect explanation. Thank you!

I’m from c/all and WTF does this mean? I understand base 10, 2, and 12 and the concept of a base in general but…wut???

“midnight” and “noon” for sure.

… And now I’m thinking about all those super heros and villains named “midnight” and their logical counter-characters “noon”

I never said anything about the quality of the games. I’m speaking specifically to the monetization bullshit.

As I said elsewhere: budget bloat happens in a lot of places. Greedy executive and publishers is one place. Overambitious design goals that get scrapped is another. There’s also bad tools workflows, mismanagement, and any number of other contributing factors.

But even indie devs are getting screwed on pricing and making far less than they deserve to be in many cases.

If people keep buying CoD and Assassins Creed, devs will keep making them. And if they can’t increase retail price to cover the budget they will find other ways to do it.

I almost replied from my inbox; glad someone said it before I even got to it haha

Oh don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying the capital structure is fair by any means. I understand all the reasons why people - especially right now - are struggling to justify big purchases.

And I will readily agree that inefficient and improper use of resources is one of the contributing factors to ballooning development budgets

That said, video games are - and I challenge you to disprove this - easily one of the best investments for entertainment. Dollars-per-hour of fun on a 20hr, $60 game is $3. For a live service game where people spend hundreds of thousands of hours playing it can get below $0.10 per hour.

EDIT: I also agree that demos need to make a comeback because I’m sick of wasting money. Though people also need to read some reviews before they buy occasionally :/

While that may be true, the costs and budgets we’re dealing with today are orders of magnitude higher than they were back then. Physical product manufacturing doesn’t even come close to making up the difference when you factor in digital storefront costs.

I simply chose two big, well known, and beloved titles for the sake of expediency.

This problem is not unique to big budget games.

Indie devs are getting screwed too. You saying that you’ve found great games for $30-40 from indie devs isn’t an argument against more sustainable pricing like you think it is.

If the dev budget for the indie game was 5% of the AAA game but the price was 50% then you’ve literally just helped prove my point

The fact is - and I challenge you to prove me wrong here - video games continue to be hands down the best dollar-per-hour investment for entertainment. Even a $60 game that only lasts 20 hrs is still coming in at $3/hr of entertainment, which is very hard to beat. When you look at live service games where people will spend literally thousands of hours after paying anywhere from $60-200 you’re looking at $0.10/hr in some cases.

Fun facts incoming!

Cost of “Mario 64” on release = $59.99

Development budget for Mario 64 = ~$1.56mil

Inflation adjusted Mario 64 cost in 2022 = $111.91

Inflation adjusted Mario 64 budget in 2022 = ~$2.91mil

Cost of “Elden Ring” on release = $59.99

Estimated dev. budget for Elden Ring = $100mil-200mil

Mario 64 units sold = ~12mil

Elden Ring units sold = ~28mil

These details are provided without comment. You do the math and decide whether the fact that prices haven’t changed since 1996 might be the reason for some of the enshitification we continue to see.

And now for the comment:

Consumers are horrifyingly resistant to price increases for games. It is directly responsible for many of the shitty monetization models we’ve seen. Development budget continue to rise, even on indie games, while consumers pay less and less in “real money value” over time.

It’s completely unsustainable and the very reason the “business types” get involved, forcing unpopular monetization schemes