Kobolds with a keyboard.

  • 5 Posts
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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 5th, 2023

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  • Yeah and I mean, I don’t see anyone saying he didn’t do a lot of good things over the past 4 years. Those are also the same points he kept repeating ad nauseam in this interview, but the problem is, that’s not the issue on everyone’s mind right now, and that’s not what really matters here.

    What matters is, is he physically and mentally fit to continue doing that for another 4 years? And unfortunately, even if the answer is a firm ‘Yes’, he still needs to demonstrate that it’s the case, and convince all of his potential voters that it’s the case, which re-stating past successes is not doing.



  • This is really hard to watch. He keeps dodging the questions, and he really comes across like he just has no awareness of what’s actually going on in his own country.

    George keeps asking very pointed questions like “Do you think you have the mental capacity to do this job for another four years?” and Biden just keeps re-stating things he’s done for the last 4 years. George asks the titular “Would you have an independent analysis done, etc.”, and Biden keeps dodging the question with, “I have that evaluation every day [because I make difficult decisions]”.

    He doesn’t seem to comprehend that he is likely to lose this election if he doesn’t change peoples’ minds about his mental fitness, and when offered the opportunity to prove that he’s not suffering from mental decline, he brushes it off. He says he’s going to keep running because he knows what’s best for the country, as if he thinks it’s a foregone conclusion that if he runs, he’ll win.

    He just keeps going back to how much Trump lies, and how awful Trump is, rather than trying to address the concern that he’s not fit to oppose Trump.

    Edit: Best Biden moment in the whole thing. “Sure [I’ve had time to challenge Trump], but I’ve also been doing a whole lot of other things, like wars around the world[…]”





  • The problem with cosmetic microtransactions is that it gives the creators a monetary incentive to make sure nothing you can earn in the game is as appealing as the microtransaction items, or that their availability (in cases where you can earn the same items in-game) are low enough that you’ll never reasonably earn what you want.

    You can say ‘Cosmetics don’t matter!’ but the astronomical sales of cosmetic items pretty much proves that to the majority of players, that is not the case.

    They also often intentionally create game mechanics specifically to ensure that players who aren’t paying see the better-looking players who did pay.










  • Did you play Dark Messiah of Might and Magic? This looks very reminiscent of that; the trailer looked very similar in style, lots of focus on the first-person animations, physics manipulation (e.g. kicking enemies off cliffs), the same sort of combat style.

    It played more or less exactly like it looked, and for its time, it was fantastic - truly innovative and fresh feeling. With that in mind, I really hope that’s what they’re using as inspiration here, and that they capture that same game feel.


  • I mentioned democratic decision-making around defederation but it’s likely other changes will be needed as well.

    Be the change you want to see in the world. You don’t have to code in an integrated solution; all you’d have to do is set up an online poll, listing all of the other instances up for consideration (such a list can be pretty easily obtained - for example from https://lemmy.fediverse.observer/list ), run a new poll on regular intervals, say, every 2 months, and let anyone who is interested vote. Then, you update the defederation list based on the results of the poll.

    However, I think you’ll quickly run into the other problems I outlined which, unfortunately, can’t really be changed. You could require everyone who’s participating in the voting to also be contributing time or money to run the server, except that then you’re operating a plutocracy, not a democracy, so most likely, you’ll need to be giving up your time and money to make your desired server administration a reality.



  • I’m not sure why you’re giving a history lesson when I already acknowledged that point in the comment you are replying to.

    It’s because, despite claiming to have acknowledged the problem, you’re still making such an incredible false equivalency - comparing joining a new Lemmy instance to moving out of an authoritarian country - that you either completely misunderstand what you’re talking about, or you’re arguing in bad faith.

    Sure, I theoretically could create my own instance, but then I would have the same problem as current instance admins, even those who are sympathetic to these ideas, as I suspect Lemmy.world and my own are. That there is no structure within Lemmy to enable collective decisions to be made or executed, and I would need to build them from scratch.

    You’d have full control over your instance, and could, if you built up a community, use any online voting method you wanted - of which there are plenty - to poll your userbase and gather their opinions.

    However, ultimately, you’d be the one paying for the instance, and doing the work to set it up and keep it updated and running. What would you do if you attracted a userbase that had views that were completely counter to your own? What if you attracted the alt-right crowd, and what got voted into place was all hate-speech, nazi rhetoric, and intolerance? (I assume you disagree with these things…) Would you continue paying for and hosting the instance, just because that’s what was democratically decided, even though it’s no longer an instance that you want to participate in? Could anyone really fault you for not wanting to do that?

    A better method might be for you to make clear your own opinions - either via a post explaining them, or via a pre-defined federation / defederation plan - and let people join your instance who agreed with those decisions. Which, incidentally, is how most instances currently operate.


  • One could also simply move to another country if desired.

    That’s nowhere near as easy for the majority of people - especially those in authoritarian countries - as you’re making it out to be.

    North Korean defectors are North Korean people who left North Korea to become citizens in a new country. In North Korea, it is against the law to leave North Korea without permission. North Koreans are also not allowed to change their own citizenship, so anyone born a North Korean must also die a North Korean. The punishment for leaving North Korea without permission is extremely harsh. People who are caught are usually sent a prison camp or put to death in public. Like many other crimes in North Korea, illegally leaving the country may not only punish the accused, but also his or her family up to three generations.

    The fact that there I can choose which authoritarian system I want to be under means little when they are all quite similar. I don’t know of any instances that have such democratic governance. They are all run by their admins as they see fit. It would be like choosing if I want to live in North Korea or Nazi Germany. Sure, they might be different in some ways, but I don’t have a real voice in decisions either way.

    Anyone can start an instance. Make your own, and federate with whomever you want. Nobody’s stopping you.