rainynight65

I had lots of time to play games, but not a lot of money to buy games.

Now it's the other way round.

If I could bring back anything from back then, it's boxed PC games that can be resold and traded. Covered a lot of my gaming needs from second hand shops.

No fictional dystopia needed. China already performs mass surveillance and has systems in place to enforce desirable behaviours in citizens. This is just another evolutionary phase.

Wouldn't be the first time he has 'crossed legal lines'.

However, wouldn't it be great if it was the last time?

These people never walk back their bullshit. When called out on it, they will double down. When proven wrong, they will change the topic. But they need to be seen as strong, and right. Admitting that you're wrong or even apologising is neither - it's weak, and it can create doubt. If they were wrong about this, then what else are they wrong about?

They radicalise their followers with lies and falsehoods, and they can only keep that up if they are not seen as being wrong about what they say. They spread their lies with confidence and zeal, and if reality disagrees, then reality is wrong.

There is absolutely nothing complex about this matter. A woman had a physical advantage over another woman, and is immediately suspected of not being a 'real woman'. This shit is as old as time itself, and it would never happen to a man.

Railway and train modellers, of all scales. To their credit, a fair fee people are becoming more open, but especially modelling clubs are often run by old white men with questionable politics and problematic behaviours. They will sneer at anything that's not steam, or at people who run modern instead of vintage trains, or who don't get a train model exactly right the way the original ran that one time in the mid 50s from Bumfuck, Idaho to the middle of nowhere. They have little patience for newbies who might not have internalised all the lingo, or who might need something explained in simple English. If you build something that is not an exact replica of a real world location, they'll say you're not doing model railway, but merely toy trains. And then these same people go and wonder why they can't attract new people to the hobby.

Oh fuck off. For one, it's not even clear whether higher testosterone levels really give an athlete that much of an edge - many high level male athletes have comparatively low testosterone levels. Secondly, the forms of doping that involve testosterone are not manifesting themselves purely in higher testosterone levels - there are other tests for that. If there was any suspicion that this athlete was doping, they'd run the gamut on her - note how many athletes were already suspended this year, and they're not from comparatively poor countries like Algeria.

If a male boxer beats an opponent to a pulp, then we collectively shrug and move on. Oh well, he was just better. Poor matchmaking. But when it involves women, suddenly there must be something wrong with the athlete who, applying Occam's Razor, simply was stronger.

Michael Phelps is taller than the average pro swimmer, has an unusually long upper body and short lower body, longer arms and bigger feet than a regular person of his size would have, all this giving him more pulling power and less drag in the water. His muscles produce less lactic acid than the average athlete, shortening his recovery time.

Nobody has ever called him a freak. His success is attributed to willpower and skill.

Something that conforms to or supports my views: not political.

Something that contradicts my views: political.

Thing is though, if that's his plan, he still needs to keep his base energised. If all they see him do now is slack off and visibly not care, they may just think he's given up, and not turn up on election day. Fraud will be harder to argue with meagre turnout of his voters. They may also be harder to mobilise in November if they got disenchanted with him in September.

So in a way, by stewing, sulking and slacking off, he may just not be doing himself any favours.

Ideology over identity, every single time, without fail.

Last time I checked, on iOS it didn't have either.

Edit: just checked, the iOS version still doesn't have downloads and does not support casting to Chromecast.

Inane Khelif never 'failed a gender test'. A single test of unspecified nature and undisclosed method conducted by an unreliable sports governing body has purportedly either revealed higher testosterone levels or XY chromosomes. But due to the unspecified nature the result is neither reproducible nor reliable.

Let me rephrase.

Nobody has ever called him a freak in earnest, and nobody has ever scrutinised him the way they are scrutinising every single woman who dares to be successful while not conforming to an arbitrary and ever-narrowing standard of womanhood.

You can disable and even delete an eSIM-profile. Then it's just a dead chip. If your provider is halfway decent, you can recover a deleted eSIM-profile as well.

When I traveled last year, having eSIM-capability in my phone was extremely convenient. I picked two providers, one as the primary and one as a backup in case there were problems with the first one. No juggling with the SIM-tray and different nano SIMs.

She has previously tested for high testosterone levels in a test that was, by the words of an IOC official, "cobbled together, as I understand, overnight [during the world championships] to change the results.” The nature of the tests was unspecified,, and the governing body has been banned from the Olympics over governance and corruption issues. It has been insinuated that the unspecified test at the world championships was only administered by the Russian-led IBA after Khelif defeated a Russian athlete.

Khelif was born a woman, has identified as a woman all her life, and was even banned from boxing as a child by her father because he deemed it to be 'not for girls'. She has competed for years, has wins and losses in her belt like any other athlete.

And yes, as you say, high testosterone levels in women can occur due to a variety of reasons, including medical ones. So we should not immediately suspect foul play when a high performing female athlete has above average testosterone.

Since I'm on my phone I am not going to deeplink each claim - receipts are in the following articles:

https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/olympics-boxer-imane-khelif-anti-trans-rcna164721

https://apnews.com/article/olympics-2024-boxing-gender-4b6eb881cce9c34484d30c68ad979127

And one more thing: a man would never be subject to this kind of demeaning scrutiny even if he seriously outperforms his peers. Michael Phelps has unusual body features that give him an almost unfair edge over competitors. He has won 20 gold medals in his career. His success is attributed to skill and hard work. Katy Ledecky has matched his medal tally, and was subjected to the same suspicions and demeaning scrutiny as Khelif is now. Hint: there is no evidence that she is anything but a woman. The gender scrutiny of high performing female athletes goes back to the 1930s, because for some reason high performing women with a perceived unusual or 'non-feminine' physique are immediately suspect.

Roughly 50% of human beings are female. It's only fitting that around 50%0 of games have female leads. It doesn't need to be special, a female lead doesn't need to justify her existence. It should be commonplace.

Real estate as an investment, retirement provision or object of speculation is precisely the problem. Every home that gets bought as an investment in an inflated housing market directly contributes to the problem, by cutting people out of the opportunity of ownership and making them dependent on paying rent.

When I started University, I used part of my small savings to buy a very nice bicycle so I could get around between uni districts.

When I moved into a shared student apartment, there was a locked bicycle room in the basement. Only resident keys would fit that lock. Nonetheless I still locked my bike separately.

The one day I forgot to do that, my bike was no longer there the next day. It pissed me off immensely because I couldn't immediately afford a new one, and the theft really made me uncomfortable. Mostly the fact that it must have involved someone who lived in the same block.

You could also argue that historically ( in the west at the very least ) it was partially to stop "women" from competing in "men's" competitions, not because of a difference in physicality but because of a difference in societal expectations.

Or sometimes it was just done to stop women from beating men.

In the 1992 Olympics, a woman won gold in the mixed sex skeet shooting category, beating male competitors.

In 1996 women were barred from the erstwhile mixed event, but did not get a separate category either. Only from the 2000 Olympics a separate women's skeet shooting event was established.

The IBA has not disclosed the nature of the tests conducted on Khelif and Yu-Ting. The results therefore are not conclusive, nor are they reproducible.

Books:

Wool/Shift/Dust by Hugh Howey. A well written, immersive post apocalyptic fiction that has a satisfying conclusion.

The Passage/The Twelve/The City of Mirrors by Justin Cronin. Pretty much the same as above.

The Century Trilogy by Ken Follett. A huge read that spans almost a century (from just prior WW1 to the late 20th century), accompanying the same families from several different countries and embedding them into significant world events of the 20th century. Really well written and enjoyable.

Dream Theater "Awake" (1994). Extraordinary from the first to the last note. 75 minutes of phenomenal prog metal. They've made good and great albums before and after, but they never excelled the pure class and artistry displayed on this album.

Bruce Dickinson "The Chemical Wedding". I never liked Iron Maiden much, but Dickinson's solo stuff is a different class. Fresh, creative, varied, energetic. Most of his solo albums are well worth the listen, but "Chemical Wedding" stands out for its high variety and creativity.

Many people suffer from impostor syndrome to a degree. Many people make mistakes even when it comes to subject matters they are very familiar with. Everyone has technical problems every now and then - that's outside of your control. Technology is finicky and increasingly shit.

You'll always get people who think they know better than you, or could do something better than you. But they aren't. You are. You got where you are through your work and experience. As long you feel that you're prepared to the best of your ability and knowledge, I think your conscience can be clear.

You will never have everyone you meet like you. Some people are just basic shitheads, and some of them will write reviews like that precisely to gaslight you into doubting yourself and your abilities. They do it for kicks. If 95% of your reviews are positive, you're in a good place.

Support for downloading and Chromecast? Sign me up.

Most of the studies you linked are focused on men. The evidence regarding women is more tenuous.

Testosterone levels are generally linked to muscle size and strength, as well as higher haemoglobin concentration and thus better oxygen uptake. It has also been associated with more competitiveness in men. In terms of competitiveness, testosterone influences men's tendency to take more risks, both within and beyond sports.

There is limited research on how testosterone affects women (or how oestrogen affects men). Men and women generally do not have overlapping ranges of testosterone. In her book Better Faster Farther: How Running Changed Everything We Know About Women, Maggie Mertens writes that averages can mask the great diversity of hormone ranges.

There isn't a clear linear relationship between testosterone levels and performance, says Mertens, a journalist focusing on sports and gender. "In fact, a lot of very elite male athletes have pretty low testosterone levels overall on average." One endocrinology study found low testosterone concentrations in one-quarter of men competing in 12 of the 15 Olympic sports analysed. And Mertens says even women with hyperandrogenism, who can have testosterone levels that reach typical male ranges, don't have the same level of performance as men.

Emphases mine.

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20240731-the-sports-where-women-outperform-men

After watching the movies, I can't read the books any more. Tolkien was many things, he's great at world building and mythology, but storytelling is not among his greatest qualities.

As an older metalhead, this makes me a bit sad, but I guess I shouldn't be too surprised. The metal scene I joined in the early 90s did have its tolerance problems specifically against other music genres, but I never knew it as particularly gatekeepy, at least the circles I socialised with and the concerts and festivals I went to. There were some people who though you weren't a real metal fan if you didn't exclusively listen to metal, but they were a minority. Nobody had a problem with me not particularly liking Slayer or Motörhead, and there was no requirement to have long hair and be covered in leather and/or band patches.

Conjecture is not scientific proof.

Science is undecided on whether high testosterone levels give women an edge in sports. Many successful male athletes have comparatively low testosterone levels

That's not necessary. What's needed is to treat religious beliefs as a personal choice, and no more. You can get protection from being discriminated against based on your beliefs so long as it doesn't extend past actual disadvantage (so yes to not being disadvantaged in your workplace for being religious, but no to not wanting to bake a cake for gay people). Other than that, your religion buys you nothing. No 'medical exemptions', no special treatment, and especially no influence on other people's lifestyle choices. True freedom of religion also means freedom from religion. It stays in your home and place of worship. In public, in government, in education and healthcare, religion does not exist.

You're not exactly making yourself look intelligent there, both with your original post and this reply.

If what you **said **- there's enough games with female leads; female leads are only fine as long as the game is good; female lead is bonus points for a good game; it's no longer special - isn't what you meant, then why didn't you say what you meant?

The count of women accusing Neil Gaiman of sexual assault is now up to five.

I don't have a lot of comparisons to dubs in other languages, but most german dubs I know are average at best. The biggest problem is that they often pick voice actors who just don't suit the character or the original actor. The stilted reading/talking is another issue, which is also often present in original German productions.

I always say: if I'm ever in a situation where I need a job and can only get one with a former employer - do I want them to say "hell yeah" or "hell no"?

I've worked with people who, if they had to ask me for a reference, I would decline to give one. By the same token, I would reject their application for a job in my company or team. And I have worked with the opposite - people who will always under any circumstances get help from me if they're looking for a job. All the competence in the world doesn't help if someone is miserable to be around.

Having contacts, people who are willing to give references and similar always helps. Sure, you can do job hunting hard mode, but why make things unnecessarily difficult?

You might want to talk to some people affected by the SCOTUS overturning Roe v Wade.

When 99% of what a person says is made up bullshit, chances are the remaining 1% are too. Or at least it's taken out of context and twisted to fit a desired narrative. You can't trust anything they say either way.

Sure, training data selection impacts the output. If you feed an AI nothing but anime, the images it produces will look like anime. If all it knows is K-pop, then the music it puts out will sound like K-pop. Tweaking a computational process through selective input is not the same as a human being actively absorbing stimuli and forming their own, unique response.

AI doesn't have an innate taste or feeling for what it likes. It won't walk into a second hand CD store, browse the boxes, find something that's intriguing and check it out. It won't go for a walk and think "I want to take a photo of that tree there in the open field". It won't see or hear a piece of art and think "I'd like to be learn how to paint/write/play an instrument like that". And it will never make art for the sake of making art, for the pure enjoyment that is the process of creating something, irrespective of who wants to see or hear the result. All it is designed to do is regurgitate an intersection of what it knows that best suits the parameters of a given request (aka prompt). Actively learning, experimenting, practicing techniques, trying to emulate specific techniques of someone else - making art for the sake of making art - is a key component to humans learning from others and being influenced by others.

So the process of human learning and influencing, and the selective feeding of data to an AI to 'tune' its output are entirely different things that cannot and should not be compared.

First step to achieving that is banning homeschooling - way too many people use that as a way to avoid their children getting educated about stuff they don't want them to know.

Here's my thing about 'Ten'.

I love the first half of this album. It's some of the best music I know in the genre. High energy, catchy, passionate. But somehow, the second half feels to me like the band ran out of ideas and gas. After 'Jeremy' it's all pretty average, low-energy stuff, with the exception of 'Garden'.

Media literacy has never been a thing with conservatives - to this day they don't understand what the Bruce Springsteen song 'Born In The USA' is really about. Reagan famously wanted to use it for his campaign in 1984.

Also somehow conservatives have been so keen on appearing as 'not the establishment' that by now they have terminally deluded themselves into believing that they really aren't part of the establishment. How their voters believe this is anyone's guess.

And let's not talk about how the self-proclaimed defenders of free speech constantly take issue with speech they don't like.