The last time Google pulled out all the stops to fight ad blockers, I had to update uBlock Origin every now and then until the whole thing passed. That’s all.
So I’m not worried. But I am amused that they keep making ads more obnoxious, which pushes more people to use ad blockers. I didn’t even use sponsorblock until a particularly egregious bit of native advertising. They could probably gain ground by just making ads less irritating, but they absolutely will not.
Tankies: The word ‘tankie’ is meaningless because it gets overused by disingenuous people on the right.
Also tankies: Everyone who criticizes my position is right-wing.
It honestly reminds me of fascists saying that harsh criticism of Israel is inherently antisemitic. It’s a dishonest rhetorical game.
And capitalist regimes. The Russian Federation was literally founded by a betrayal of a reformist movement in the USSR, and China consulted with Milton Goddamn Friedman on their economy, ending up with billionaires. I even saw .ml users crying about Russian *oligarchs" having their assets seized (“stolen,” as they said), and unironically citing Matt Taibbi. Not even “back in the day” Taibbi, but literally The Twitter Files. Using bought & paid for corporate propaganda to make their point.
They’re just campists. I don’t want to run afoul of a “No True Scotsman” situation, but fuck, for people who seem to think they’re the Only True Socialists, they’re willing to drop socialism in an instant if it means they can be edgy dickheads on the internet.
Yeah. It can be simultaneously true that voting is a fundamentally broken system that will only allow for so much change, and that elections have life-or-death consequences. It can also be simultaneously true that both the parties are terrible, and that the Democrats are less bad.
I would give them more credit if they ever did any organizing, or even talked about organizing, but it’s just crabs in a bucket.
Oh, and in another thread, they were complaining about “theft.” It was the seizure of Russian assets to fund the defense of Ukraine. They were defending the foreign bank accounts of billionaires. Real clown shit.
Preach. Those people drive me up the fucking wall. And especially since their idea of praxis is being a dick on the internet and not voting, then claim to be the only true leftists.
Love it.
In a similar way, I also like to pull out “capitalism only works on paper.”
Seriously. If someone’s support is transactional, it isn’t worth shit. It’s not like having an okay position on some issues means you “get” to call for a little extermination, as a treat.
You don’t have to be perfect on every issue, but for fuck’s sake, there are hard lines when it comes to people’s right to exist, and live free. And even any decent takes she had are long past, since nearly ALL she does nowadays is rage tweet about trans people from her fucking castle.
Everyone. Everyone. The article is five SENTENCES long.
Two climate activists on Tuesday targeted Botticelli’s masterpiece “The Birth of Venus” hanging at Florence’s Uffizi Gallery, attaching images of recent flood damage in the Tuscany region on the protective glass.
(Emphasis mine. I also wanted to pause to mention that this is likely a sentence you wouldn’t have to click through to read, because it’s in the preview on Lemmy.)
Authorities immediately cleared the room and the two protesters were brought by carabinieri for questioning. Under a new law, the protesters risk up to six months of jail time.
The protest materials were easily removed from the glass without leaving a trace, and the room where the painting hangs was reopened within 15 minutes.
The activists from the Last Generation climate movement said they were protesting the Italian government’s failure to address climate issues that result in more frequent floods and landslides, including severe flooding in Tuscany last year that left at least six people dead and caused widespread damage.
I’m sorry, but complaints about any damage done by this protest aren’t exactly serious arguments.
I quit Spotify when the “New Library Experience” completely fucked the music library side of the app. If you mostly use playlists, it was a lateral change. If you used it to collect some songs here, and album there, and keep them all sorted, it’s like it dumped your entire collection on the floor and expected a thank-you for the new organization system.
My guess, as others have mentioned, is that Spotify tries to squeeze more profits by pushing certain songs, whether because they get paid to promote them, or the royalties are lower. That’s easier to do with their playlists and recommendations, so they pushed people to that side of the app by making everything else dogshit. And now, apparently, the curated side took it too far and is awful, too.
I still use Apple Music, which is one of like two services that actually let you organize your music in a sensible way outside of playlists. That said, after I cut cords with video streaming services and set up my own library, I think I might do the same with music.
And their recommendation engine sucks.
Netflix used to be famously good at suggesting films. Articles were written about it, and there was even a cash reward for anyone who could contribute to its performance. Then it just turned to shit.
And the funny thing is that it would have helped counteract the shrinking library. Sure, there would be fewer films on the platform, so you’d be less likely to find a specific title, but at least you could select a film Netflix recommended based on your past ratings and be fairly confident you’d enjoy it. Now? Absolutely not.
A big part of the confusion comes from the fact that different people will use these terms differently.
In a capitalist framework, there’s private property and public property. Either an individual (or or specific group) own something, anything, or it’s owned by the government.
In a socialist framework, private property is distinguished from personal property. Personal property is your stuff that you use for yourself. Your coat, your car, your TV, etc. Private property is the means of production, or capital—things that increase a worker’s ability to do useful work. Think factories or companies, where ownership in and of itself, regardless of labor, would make the owner money. Socialists think that kind of private property shouldn’t exist, because it means wealthy people can just own stuff for a living, profiting off of the people who do the work.
Housing can go either way. Owning a home for yourself and your family would be far closer to personal property, while owning an apartment building to collect rent would be far closer to private property.
Socialism, for the most part and historically, is an umbrella term describing social rather than private ownership. That would include anarchism, which largely synonymous with “libertarian socialism.” Lenin, on the other hand, used it to more specifically refer to an intermediate stage between capitalism in communism, so you might see people using that more narrow definition to exclude anarchists, democratic socialists, etc.
Yeah, it’s definitely in the same wheelhouse as modern D&D, so if you like that general experience but want to try something new, it’s worth checking out. It’s my pick when I want high adventure, superheroic fantasy, with engaging set piece encounters, which is the vibe both games are going for.
@machinaeZERO@lemm.ee is also right on the money. There’s going to be a revision coming up, but the old stuff is still compatible and in Humble Bundle right now. (Pathfinder does that periodically, and they’re pretty sweet deals!) One more thing is that all the rules are free, legitimately. There’s a wiki called The Archives of Nethys, which has ALL the rules content from ALL the books. Paizo allows it, and explicitly gave the site the green light to do that. The books are still nice to have, and you still need them if you want adventures or lore, but you never have to buy a book just to get some rules in it, like a class or feat or whatever.
Exactly. It’s just goosing the numbers. The company made this much in profit, and the cost-cutting from firing people will save money immediately, so it looks great… on paper… for a little while. It doesn’t matter if the company is gutted, because the CEO and most of the investors will dip before things get too bad, and go onto the next thing. The employees will suffer and the customers will be upset, but CEOs don’t answer to them, they answer to shareholders, and shareholders just want the line to go up this quarter.
Ah, the Jack Welch method.
(Seriously, fuck that guy. He was a pioneer among bloodsucking CEOS, and part of it was mass layoffs to boost short-term profits.)
Eh, yes and no.
Pathfinder 1e was pretty much just straight-up continuing D&D 3.5e, but with some tweaks. Pathfinder 2e overhauled a lot of stuff, often simplifying things, but still pretty complex.
Compared to D&D 5e, Pathfinder has more rules, but those rules often make things easier, or (IMO) get you more return for the effort. So, for example: The feat list is bigger and more complicated, but in practice, it means you only need to look at a handful of them when you level up, which is easier (and the rules give you guidelines for swapping things out if you don’t like them). The monk has more decisions to make with stances and attack types, but that’s… kind of what you want with a monk to make combat interesting. There are rules for boats, and holy shit how does 5e not have rules for boats.
The last example might sound silly, but it’s part of what convinced me to switch. It’s an annoying omission in and of itself, but also speaks to a broader pattern of 5e just not supporting Dungeon Masters, letting them fix the either broken or incomplete rules, or else take the blame for them. Pathfinder actually supports Dungeon Game Masters, as though their time, effort, and fun were just as valuable as anyone else’s. /rant
Pathfinder 2e is what I’d play if I wanted something like 5e, but runs differently. If I wanted something similar, I’d pick something else, but that’s a longer, even more off topic discussion to go into unprompted. :P
Yeah. I guess it will vary from instance to instance, but from my personal experience, viewing “All” on Lmemy isn’t noticeably more political than /r/all. There’s maybe less diversity in the stories, and more memes, but still. It’s not bad.
Reddit has absolutely been way worse at times, by the way. When T_D was allowed to run roughshod over the front page, and spez bent over backwards to not ban them despite clearly being a nuisance and breaking the rules.
Their Twitter is even leaning into the “answering questions” angle. Just frame the backlash as a result of ignorance, rather than people being reasonably upset by a situation they understand perfectly well. Then they dodge inconvenient questions about things like malicious automated downloads. Of course, they’re happy to “listen to feedback.” Not act on it, of course, but the social media person is happy to scroll past whatever you have to say!
It might even be simpler than that. Capitalism just doesn’t care past the next quarter. And when ownership is disconnected from labor or even from customer, than it’s just a really rudimentary collective intelligence. The shareholders just want the line to go up, and everyone in the corporate structure is accountable to the shareholders, so they all do their part, big or little, to make that happen. It completely dispenses with personal responsibility, whether for negative externalities, direct harm, or even the future as close as months from now.