This is a nice graph for debunking the idea that biology offers a sort of refuge for the proponents of a strict binary sexual framework. Let it be known that once in a while some people born with penises are XX while some people born with vulvas are XY, and that this is just the tip of the iceberg. Maleness and femaleness might be fact as poles of a spectrum (might be more complicated); what they are NOT is an either/or mutually exclusive phenomenon. The distribution of the population on that supposed spectrum probably look like an inverted bell curve, with most persons closer to either end… but to be honest I suspect the curve is not as pronounced as we are led to think.

Personally speaking I’m forty something and by now I’m convinced I’m not 100% pure male stuff. I don’t give a shit if it’s biological or social. I feel it in a myriad of ways. I’m comfortable enough in the way I’m treated and perceived though so I let sleeping dogs lie and ride the male label. I’m hairy, I have a dick, I don’t want trouble. So this is totally unscientific, but I swear sometimes I recognize this same ambiguous essence in someone else; there’s a faint feeling of kinship. I’m willing to bet the silent majority has plenty of folks who wouldn’t have minded being a wee bit further from the poles if others didn’t make such a fucking fuss about it.

I sided with the rebels and Barik became this massive frustrated Northerner supremacist, despising Tiersmen every chance he had and urging me to let the Disfavored civilize them. Fuck that.

Don’t even try completing an FTL run at normal though. Easy is where the fun’s at.

I started Planet Crafter and I’m hooked. It’s a low budget yet brilliant Subnautica like game with a higher emphasis on crafting.

I’ve been playing Tyranny as well. It’s a nice CRPG with factions in a bleak setting. A little obtuse with the consequences of dialog options. Still refreshing. I really could use the tank character in my party composition, but he’s such an insufferable square I’d rather not use him.

Have some empathy for megacorporations. They’re moral (lol) entities just like you and me. /s

Aloy from Horizon Zero Dawn made me realize I vibe so well playing as a woman. If I had had the choice I probably would have picked the masculine option since that’s my gender. I’m glad that game forced my hand, now when I have a choice I give it a real thought.

It’s not a take though, it’s a thing. The tendency to fall into irrational beliefs has been called “Dysrationalia” in psychology and is linked to higher education and intelligence. An example would be the tendency of Nobel prize winners to espouse crazy theories later in life, which is humourously referred to as the Nobel Disease.

Hard disagree. Tools can absolutely be blamed or otherwise regulated on account of their affordances. You’re very close to the “Guns don’t kill people, people kill people” argument.

I struggle with the framing of generative AI as an a11y tool as well. I understand that it may serve this purpose, but it’s much more than that. Generative AI deserves scrutiny for being such a powerful disinformation tool, for driving massive power consumption and for perpetuating harmful biases.

Also I don’t see what you’re trying to achieve preemptively calling anyone who disagrees a reactionary… Look, you’ve been posting a lot of hot takes daily for a while now and I feel like maybe you’d profit from reading and reflecting on things, take time to dig into stuff? Right now you’re just asserting one thing after another as fact with little to support any of it.

Don’t OpenCritic only offer critic scores, and no user scores?

“Lesser evil” is an idiom and as such should not be taken literally. It essentially means that between immoral options, the least immoral one should be chosen.

In a democracy, a voter will often have to choose between candidates while none of the candidates espouse the exact same positions as the voter. The voter is essentially faced with a multiple criteria decision. I’m against the idea of not voting on account of there not being a candidate filling all the criteria. Voting remains a fundamental way of influencing our governments. You can get involved in other ways as well if you wish to do more.

The only flaw of SMB3 to me would be that this game needed save games reeaal bad.

The NES was epic for its time, but nowadays those controllers make my hands cramp after minutes. Thank God for the modern big curvy controllers.

Some classics of that time might be of interest to the contemporary gamer, although I think you need to have some kind of historical curiosity for it to be worthwhile. The tools of the times were rudimentary to an extent that hurt what the devs could do even more than the capacity of the consoles imho. I mean, they were flipping bits in assemblers.

The audio though. 8-bit music is fucking stellar. The energy contained, the catchiness, it’s amazing.

As for recommendations: The Guardian Legend is my pick. Cool scifi action-adventure/ shmup hybrid.

Oh, new game from Cross-Code devs, neat!

The low poly 3D for environments looks good, and the 2D isometric was getting me confused sometimes in Cross-Code, so yay!

It’s important to note that opting into the Apple ecosystem locks you out of any form of agency on your hardware. They’ve moved hard against repairability and they maintain a stranglehold on spare parts.

For that reason I prefer my personal desktop computer to be a PC I can open, maintain or upgrade myself in terms of hardware. The operating system is my choice as well.

I understand not everybody has the means or interest to tinker with their machine, but I still think Apple’s business practices regarding hardware is wasteful and polluting.

I would like to offer as a counterpoint that everything is political. Tech is no exception. Tech is a tool, a tool comes with a specific affordance and an affordance suggests to the wielder a certain worldview. To wilfully ignore the social and political impact of one’s work does not protect it from the world’s turmoil.

A lot of sectors need custom software and some of them have a mission more noble than profits. Government, education, science, culture… IT jobs in non-tech places can be rewarding too and you’ll get to have plenty of colleagues that aren’t your classmates. Being knowledgeable about various open source software can be valuable as well career wise.

Yeah, their reporting suffers from not adequately defining what is being measured.

From the org’s definition of bots, I’d say it’s implicit that bot activity excludes expected communication in an infrastructure, client-server or otherwise. A bot is historically understood as an unexpected, nosy guest poking around a system. A good one might be indexing a website for a search engine. A bad one might be scraping email addresses for spammers.

In any case, none of the examples you give can be reasonably categorized as bots and the full report gives no indication of doing so.

Do you like tech? If you actually do, you might bank on those existing skills and look for another workplace. IT is everywhere and there are places where it’s fun. You could ask yourself what’s a mission you would care about and start looking for workplaces that are connected and that give the right vibe. Personally I build web stuff for education and I’m a happy camper.

It’s telling that once again China is shown to coerce their citizens by threatening and punishing their loved ones. In Canada, there is a public inquiry right now about foreign interference in federal elections. China is a main subject, as they’ve coerced Chinese students into meddling with contestant nomination. The students’ family and legal student status were threatened.