Are_Euclidding_Me [e/em/eir]

This article is dogshit. Absolutely extremely terrible. I’m going to argue against one tiny piece of it, a single paragraph, because I think this paragraph encapsulates the issue I have with the article.

Here’s the paragraph:

We need to have far fewer smartphones, because we will never be able to manufacture them sustainably. We need to use less energy, because the energy transition and renewables revolution have already failed. And for these things to happen we need to have fewer humans, because it is the only way which absolutely guarantees the reduction of our impact on the planet.

I agree that we need to produce fewer smartphones and we need to consume less electricity. That far, I’m with the author. But the conclusion, that only by having fewer people will we have fewer smartphones and less usage of electricity, is patently ridiculous. Just, incomprehensibly wrong. Let me give one extremely easy, like, embarrassingly easy, counterargument for each of these claims.

For smartphones, the counterargument is that we “need” so many smartphones because of planned obsolescence, because phones are specifically made to be replaced in a year or two so that smartphone manufacturers can sell expensive pieces of equipment to people every couple of years.

For electricity, data centers use like 10 times as much electricity as everything else combined. Just get rid of data centers and electricity is significantly less of a problem. Oh no, we’ll no longer have access to so-called “AI” or cryptocurrency. Oh no.

This article fucking sucks. The earth could easily support as many humans as currently exist, probably even more, but not if the wealthy insist on continuing to amass capital to the detriment of literally everyone on earth.

You should, if all goes well, be able to win. I’d look for a defense drone, I’d upgrade shields to at least 3 bubbles (I know you have the Zoltan shield, that helps, but still, for the flagship you’re going to want more shields), and I’d maybe swap out a beam for a pew-pew if you can find a decent one. Or upgrade your hacking. That works too. And sell some stuff. I’d sell both the system repair and the anti-drone, but that’s just because I find the anti-drone downright useless. Sell one of your missiles, probably the breach, and sell a beam, you absolutely don’t need 3 of them. With that cash you can buy some upgrades, I would prioritize hacking and oxygen. A helm upgrade also wouldn’t hurt, but only do that if you have the cash for it, I wouldn’t make it a priority!

So you’re using some weird definition of “skinner box” where you simply mean “human inputs lead to various outputs”. Why use this definition? By this definition a fucking mathematical function is a skinner box.

I simply do not understand, in general, what you’re trying to say.

Goosebumps choose your own adventure novels.

But to take you a tiny bit more seriously, ok? So what? Why does “I have some agency in this story” make a story bad? What actually are you getting at here?

do you think a novel is a skinner box

All Vidya Gamez are fundamentally Skinner Boxes.

No they are not and I will fight you. If you mean multiplayer online games, well maybe, you might have a point, but I don’t play those games and so I will make no claims about them.

However. If you call Outer Wilds or Pathologic/Pathologic 2 or Disco Elysium or A Short Hike or Journey skinner boxes, well, you’re just wrong. Games are experiences, they’re stories that can be more immersive than a movie or a book and if they’re done well, holy shit are they good!

Games are (can be) amazing, and I’m sick of pretending they’re not.

i hate you

Don’t pretend to have empathy for me, shithead

This is such a shitty “joke”. Fucking hell. I hope you experience even half of the suffering a dairy cow experiences during their life. You won’t, because the world isn’t fair, but if I could imprison you and exploit your reproductive system until you’re too old and worn out to be worthwhile and then kill you, I would do so.

You are a disgusting human. I’m actually appalled reading the shit you’re writing. It’s not often that I read such concentrated evil. You don’t think death and servitude cause suffering? You think domesticated animals choose to stay in factory farms? You’re a fucking ghoul.

You’ll find that it’s not possible for the US to completely pull out of supporting them with military aid.

Why not? The US has supported Israel since its formation, no arguments there, but so what? Why couldn’t that change?

Am I reading the article right? My understanding of what I just read is that in 2016 some social media accounts with ties to Russia put out some pro-Stein statements and then a year or two later Stein was photographed sitting at the same table as Putin.

Neither of those two facts suggest to me that she is, as you put it, “another Russian tool”. Especially since the article itself says that there’s no evidence she knew about the Russian social media accounts boosting her and there wasn’t an interpreter sitting at the table with her and Putin.

Can you please tell me what I’ve missed? Is there more evidence that she’s a “Russian tool”? Because the evidence in the article you linked seems extremely weak.

Oh my, I literally read the comment you’re replying to backwards! I thought they said that carnists hate vegans. I’m glad you’re here to read properly and give a great response!

Yeah, good point! In a world without intellectual property rights, of course there would still be large projects, they’d just be, well, actually good and not shitty focus-grouped sequels.

Oh my, I literally read the comment you’re replying to backwards! I thought they said that carnists hate vegans. I’m glad you’re here to read properly and give a great response!

I agree we probably wouldn’t get any more Assassin’s Creed or Deadpool and Wolverine. Very likely those kinds of media would die out in a world where no one pays for media. I have a hard time saying that’s a bad thing. We’d instead have more weird little indie projects, which are so, so much better in every way. But sure, if you feel morally queasy about “stealing” (it’s not stealing, it’s copying) from giant corporations who make artistically bankrupt crap, I’m not going to convince you otherwise, and it would be a waste of my time to try and do so.

Maybe I should point out here that sometimes I do go out of my way to pay for media (especially games) when I don’t have to. I bought Dwarf Fortress on Steam, even though the devs give it away for free and I donated to them a couple times before they released it on Steam. They are living off the money people pay for Dwarf Fortress and I’m so glad they’re able to do so. I also bought my sister a copy of Pathologic 2 she has never (and probably will never) play because I bought my copy on sale and loved it and felt bad that I hadn’t paid full price to a dev team that put their heart and soul into the game and had it sell abysmally for some reason. (Side note, play Pathologic 2, it’s good!) I bought the Celeste soundtrack from Lena Raine’s bandcamp because I love it so much, even though it’s extremely easy to find and I’ve actually lost access to my bandcamp account.

I guess I’m saying there’s nuance here and I like it when actual artists who make good art are paid. It’s just that in our current society, buying a DVD or paying for Netflix or paying for Xbox gamepass or anything like that doesn’t benefit the artists, the vast majority of any money you spend to acquire media goes straight to wealthy executives and I just don’t see anything wrong with not giving them more money than they’re already getting.

Mine is pretty similar! It just looks so very weird. Dates aren’t supposed to look like that!

That’s a common misconception. But it’s not true. Artists will keep making art whether they’re paid or not. Anti-piracy rhetoric tends to come from large corporations (AAA game studios, movie studios, publishing houses, record labels) who demand ever-increasing profits, not from the artists themselves. The people who actually do the work to make games, movies, songs, books, whatever are basically never well-paid, instead their corporate overlords make all the profit and pay the people who actually make the art you enjoy as little as they can possibly get away with, just as with every other job under capitalism.

Pirating media does absolutely no harm unless you’re pirating from a small indie creator. But if you just want to play the latest Ubisoft slop or watch the latest Marvel movie, go ahead and pirate. The money you’d spend on them go straight into the pockets of wealthy executives, not to the artists who do the work.

I don’t know why I hate that the dates in the title are written as fractions. It’s fine, it’s very clear that they’re dates but I saw them and was instantly like

I don’t understand why I have such strong feelings about such an extremely unimportant stylistic choice, but here we are!