As a rule, no, but I’ll make some rare exceptions.

It has to be a small studio, I have to be pretty sure I’ll like their next game, and I have to have enjoyed their past game enough that it’s worth throwing them a few extra bucks.

For instance, I’m going to pre-order Slay the Spire 2.

• Mega Crit is an indie studio.

• I thought StS1 was exquisite, so I’m optimistic about a sequel from the same people.

• I playes StS1 for hundreds of hours, so even if the sequel is a whiff, I’d have got my money’s worth from them.

Similar goes for The Haunted Chocolatier, since I played the heck out of Stardew Valley.

My favorite part is when they complain about the overuse of the word “tankie,” then call literally every other kind of leftist a lib.

I played the heck out of NWN when I was a teenager!

…by which I mean I was excited by the character options, so I ended up restarting it over and over again. I’ve done the Waterdhavian Creatures quest so many times I burnt out. :P

I should go back and actually beat the game.

I’m not sure if they deleted it or I just can’t find it, but there was a post on the LW destination that said the mods talked about the near-universal, overwhelmingly negative response, and were split 2-2 on what to do: either cancel the plans, or keep going anyway. They only made this post after considering the aforementioned near-universal, overwhelmingly response a tiebreaker.

I think that really encapsulates the problem.

And remember how they made a big deal about Bernie’s age in 2020? They asked for medical records, and even after getting letters from two or three doctors, that wasn’t enough. It was like the birthers all over again: when they got what they asked for, they moved the goal posts and wanted the long-form documents.

Meanwhile, not a peep about Biden, who is Bernie’s junior by fourteen fucking months, as if that made all the difference.

And then, four years later, it wasn’t an issue anymore. Just run the guy again.

On top of that, the DNC would condescend to anyone left of center about electability.

Well before covid, I knew Republicans would politicize almost anything. Covid made me realize I was wrong, because they will politicize literally anything, even a fucking virus.

Typical leftist cancel culture. You commit just one white supremacist terror attack, and all of a sudden you’re a pariah!

Holtorf: That’s just a story. What’s more important is the policy.

The policy is the whole fucking problem! His hypocrisy is an issue because, even with a complete lack of any ability to empathize with different people in different circumstances (which I assume as a default from right-wingers), he ought to understand this situation because it did happen to him. Yet he just doesn’t care. Christ, what an asshole.

Yeah, there’s a gap between “basic integrity and human decency” and, far below it, “average Republican behavior.” He went in between.

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.

A buddy of mine in NYC was offered a $14k bonus to move to Texas, closer to his employer. He declined for a bunch of obvious reasons, but one was that he and his girlfriend would each need a car to get around. That would quickly eat into that bonus, if not use it up entirely.

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.

Seriously.

It’s like when you see a post about punching Nazis, and concern trolls show up to complain about people misusing and overusing the term. They don’t offer a correction, and they’re not defending anyone because no specific person or group of people was called out. They just saw a negative post about Nazis and fascists, got defensive, and tried to muddy the waters. A hit dog will holler.

Also, obviously any term will be misused and overused, and I don’t know every context people are talking about. But, for my part, I see complaints about people being called “tankies” way more often than people being called tankies, and in situations like the above. And it’s usually accompanied by complaints that right-wingers are calling people tankies, something I don’t actually see all that often. What I see more often than that is the terminally online, gatekeeping left. So, is the problem coming more from actual conservatives, or from leftists that other ostensible leftists want to dismiss out of hand?

I don’t know what’s in anyone’s heart, the specific people they’re talking about, or the contexts and personal experiences they’re talking about. I’m not going to assume bad faith. But, when I see people jump in to say “tankie” is a meaningless phrase, it just sounds like the same rhetorical game when people try to say “Nazi” and “fascist” have become meaningless.

I do appreciate the fact that the Cybertruck was so clearly designed by someone who had no idea how to design a car, and that it’s Musk’s pet project. It really drives another nail in the coffin of the idea that he deserves all the credit for the work his companies do.

Then again, his most die-hard supporters draw no distinction between ownership and labor. They’re also somehow able to look at a Cybertruck and think “Wow!” rather than “Wow, is this some kind of a joke?”

Just for context for those who haven’t heard the podcast: the Christmas episodes often center around non-bastards. This is one of those. :P

When conservatives fearmonger about immigrants and brown people, one of the current favorite talking points is to say they’re “military-aged.” It’s vague and meaningless, but it implies something sinister, and plays into just about any conspiracy theory an audience member might be inclined to believe.

On top of that, they’re afraid from merely seeing these people. They’re just scared to death of brown and black kids and young adults.

Really reminds me of the “military-aged” thing. It’s just so pathetic.

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.