They increased players’ attack and defence a little, probably by 10% or something. They didn’t remove any bosses or even bosses’ attacks, they didn’t replace standard dodge with Bloodhound step or do anything drastic. I don’t understand what you are so mad about

A “hallmark sign” of having gender dysphoria is persistent identification with or insistence on being the opposite sex for at least a period of six months. And “not everyone who is questioning their gender ends up being trans” is not a statement anyone would argue with.

And no, confusion does imply being wrong. I rarely if ever saw it used as a short-hand for “not having an answer”. It usually means either “fail to understand” (e.g. “I’m confused, is the birthday on the 5th or on the 15th?”) or “made a mistake” (e.g. “Oh, sorry, I confused you for a friend of mine”). The term you’re looking for is “questioning their gender” or “exploring their gender identity”.

Being transgender is a constant and persistent condition. Even for genderfluid people the “fluidity” needs to be repeatable. If a girl/woman suffering from cramps during her period thinks “I wish I was a boy/man so that I didn’t need to suffer through this every month”, she doesn’t become trans because of it.

And “gender confusion” isn’t a fair description. It’s basically saying “they are wrong about what they’re feeling”. And you’re not a telepath to know that

Then what’s your problem with the comic?

And this is exactly the message of the comic. Yet you disagree with the comic…

I thought about it and… yes it is racist

Nah. The accurate depiction would be like this:

Republican on top: “I drillled the hole!” Democrat beside him: “If you vote for me, I’ll plug the hole!”

Voters and non-voters together at the bottom actively solving the problem. Non-voters: “I don’t want to vote for this lazy ass” Voters: “Noooo, please vote, or else Republican will drill more holes!”

(BTW I think you should vote to prevent more holes from being drilled. But Democrats don’t do enough. Biden was a president for almost a whole term now. Did he ensure basic human rights for trans people and trans kids specifically nationwide? Did he ensure basic human rights of pregnant women nationwide? Did he ensure the safety of doctors performing reproductive care? Did he penalize Israel for committing genocide? Did he enforce proper accountability for police discriminating against minorities (or, in that case, for any wrongdoings)? Doesn’t look like it to me. He did cap insulin prices for some, which is nice and a step in the right direction, but yeah, far from enough)

I also live in Russia, and in my experience certain VPNs just get blocked by the ISP. Like, I just can’t connect to certain VPNs, the connection either gets stuck in an infinine loop or fails with an error. But some other VPNs still work without any problems.

Plus, since the beginning of this month, it’s prohibited to promote/advertise “means to avoid blocked internet resources”, i.e. proxies/VPNs/etc, so it can be called “partially restricted”

I meant that these things aren’t as noticeable from outside of the country. Like, foreign news outlets probably won’t report on it much. Plus, eggs are more of an exception because of sudden shortage and prices rising rapidly. For most of the other goods the price grows more gradually and isn’t as obvious. Like in that metaphor about slowly boiling a frog.

Another problem that is noticeable from inside the country (at least by those affected by it) is that certain medications are vanishing from the pharmacies because they are no longer imported and they were never produced locally, or the local production is insufficient to meet the needs. I don’t know the full list, but the stock of ADHD meds is definitely low, and I’ve heard from friends that they had to switch to a different antidepressant due to shortages.

Uhhh, yes. It was 3am when I wrote this, so my brain probably farted hard

Adding to all the reasons already listed, Russia isn’t striving. For example, right now there is a number of towns and cities experiencing outages in central heating (with houses designed around central heating so basically no other option to heat their appartments) while the weather dips to -20°C (around -4°F). All because the centralized boiler facilities weren’t properly maintained due to the lack of money (or, to be more precise, due to money being diverted towards the war).

There are other signs, like plains malfunctioning and flights getting delayed because some component broke and cannot be replaced due to sanctions, and they happen more and more often. Also the less noticeable stuff like prices of common goods increasing by a factor of two in the last couple of years while salaries barely increased at all.

So yeah, Russia is keeping itself afloat, but it isn’t thriving at all

And I think Blizzard of Oz is a reference to Wizard of Oz which predated Ozzy for quite a bit

Artifact was certainly a game by Valve

Does this suck? To my ears, it doesn’t. Not unmistakably human by any stretch, but still pretty good. And that’s 9 years ago

And by “AI singing” do you mean “a famous voice overlaid on another singer’s performanse” or something closer to text-to-speech (text-to-song)?

Vocaloids are far from perfect, but they can be damn good in hands of a good producer. Plus, isn’t that the original point? “AI VA were invented so soon all VAs will be AI”?

And to produce the example you provided, it required a big voice bank from people who are very experienced in voicework. Top Gear/The Grand Tour have over 200 episodes where the hosts have basically the same characters throughout the show spanning like 20 years. And it still ain’t perfect. It’s damn good, but there are hiccups here and there.

So to produce a good AI voiceover, you’ll need experienced people doing a lot of work. And to get experienced human actors you will need humans acting. Hence, my point

Well, I meant it more like “can you imagine how horrible such a world is?” Not just “can you imagine it?”

Because yeah, you barely need to imagine it at all

Vocaloids were invented in 2000, with commercial release in 2004. Human singers aren’t extinct yet.

It may be possible in the future for a synthetic voice to sound fully human with a full range of emotions. But I believe that human actors and voice actors will still be used because 1) it’s easier to explain what to do to a human professional, 2) unions exist and they will push back against it.

Acting is an art. What world is it where robots do art while humans do the tedious manual labor?