redhorsejacket

@redhorsejacket@lemmy.world
1 Post – 100 Comments
Joined 1 years ago

I'm speculating, but I believe that's a portmanteau of "gut" and "cunt"...

Depends on how freely you assign historical tales mythical status, but Vinland Saga contains a lot of influence lifted directly from actual Viking stories like the Greenlander Saga.

There's enough of the fantastical in both the historical sources and in the adaptation that I think it qualifies as an adaptation of folklore, if not myth.

By all means, I'd expect him to try, however, this is a constitutional amendment. The Supreme Court can't take back an amendment the way they can strike down laws (I.e. by ruling it unconstitutional for whatever reason), because it IS constitutional by definition.

Thankfully, the Constitution is also very specific about what it takes to amend it further. 2/3 of both chambers of Congress, or 2/3 of state legislatures must vote to just propose an amendment, and then, to pass the amendment, they need 3/4 of the vote. Because the process is enumerated, there's no legal ambiguity they can use to shape their ruling the way they want. To remove term limits, you must amend the Constitution. To amend the Constitution, you must meet these (intentionally) high thresholds. If A -> then B.

So, unless Trump is able to woo half of the sitting Democrats, as well as 100% of the Republicans, we're safe from the system being used to guillotine itself (instead, the system will spend the next 4 years hitting itself in the face with a bat). Now, if Trump wants to seize power outside of the system, that's a different ball game, and the relative friendliness of judges and Congress is a moot point.

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Right? Like, if I want to be as charitable as I'm capable of being, I could understand that sentiment if you are talking about your own official forums on your website. Like, sure, if you own the content and the forum, you have the power to determine what is and isn't acceptable on your platforms. It's a stupid determination, mind you, but it's within your power. However the impression I gather from the article is that they're referring to the Steam forums, which is absolutely asinine to me.

Perhaps. But expanding ones borders through conquest also seems medieval, and guided missiles are poor tools for holding territory, so the classics still have a role to play.

Bro, maybe the Wally world clientele is different in your neck of the woods but seeing someone with makeup on, or their hair did (leaving aside the question of quality for the time being...) is the exception to the rule.

Hey I just wanted to say thank you for the breakdown. The intricacies of translation are interesting.

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I don't understand diddly about the specifics of this article (I'm a member of the normie minority on this site who is neither working in IT, nor interested in the field), but I gotta say, I loved how it was structured and written. In a sea of AI generated crap, or simply parroting talking heads and calling it news, I found the way they laid out the article in two parts ("this is what happened, followed by "this is our subjective opinion on those events based on the wider context") to be very refreshing.

Fwiw, McDonnell was, until last year, a Democrat. The article mentions it towards the end, but, in essence, he's pro-life due to his religious beliefs. He refused to block the GOPs push to enact far-reaching abortion restrictions. The Democrats censured him for breaking from the party line. He swapped over to the GOP shortly thereafter.

So, good on him for having a spine to vote his convictions regardless of party affiliations. Very no good, bad, don't do it of him to be convinced his particular supernatural fantasies have any bearing whatsoever on the bodily autonomy of his constituents.

Fwiw, this is not a case of China stepping in and censoring anything about the awards. Rather, it's a case of the Hugo administration in the West self-censoring their nominees because they feared China might step in if they didn't get ahead of the curve.

Of course, that doesn't really change the situation, but we shouldnt get the story twisted here. The blame falls on the administrators who were so afraid of a threat that they imagined that they caved to non-existent demands, rather than the Chinese (at least for direct fault, since you could argue the Chinese government's policies indirectly led to this situation and I wouldn't fight you on that).

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Hmm, so, last month I began to have issues with my Chromecast for the first time. I have an old 3rd gen Chromecast attached to my bedroom television (not a smart tv) for the purpose of casting obnoxiously long video essays to fall asleep to. After like a decade of essentially hassle free operation, it suddenly stopped being able to maintain a connection to my phone. I cast a video, and after approximately 10 minutes, the cast disconnects and I get a message on my phone saying "this video cannot be played in the background". I've tried ever troubleshooting technique I can think of.

I know I shouldn't attribute to malice what can be explained by other causes, but boy, seeing this news today sure makes me think about things like planned obsolescence.

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For what it's worth, having a lower retirement grade shouldn't actually affect his pension at all, at least in so far as I understand it.

Walz joined up in 1981, which was the year after the "High-36" retirement system was adopted. Under that system, the army looks at your career and plucks out the 36 months where you earned the most money. In the vast majority of cases, these are the final 3 years of your career. These are averaged out, and then multiplied by a percentage (2.5% per year of service, e.g. 20 years of service = 50%) to determine your monthly payment.

All of which is to say that his pension calculations do take into account the time he was an E9, even if his paperwork and other privileges rflect the lower pay grade.

Caveat: it's been several years since I retired, and it's a very complex process. I could be off base as it applies to Walz's case specifically, but what I've described is generally true.

Depends on your bunny rabbit stance, I reckon.

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I'm lucky enough to work for an organization which furnishes me with up to 4 hours of paid leave to vote. Plus, my polling place is on the road home, and I've never waited longer than a couple of minutes to vote. Finally, doing it in person feels more impactful, even if that's just a perception thing.

Its in the article, my guy.

Would the sensation be similar to being at high altitude without oxygen? There is a Smarter Every Day video from several years ago where the host conducts simple cognitive and motor function tests in a pressure chamber which simulates high altitude atmospheric conditions. Within a couple of minutes of being off oxygen, he's suffering from hypoxia and is unable to either continue the tests, or to mask up, despite being told the he will die if he doesn't secure oxygen. Admittedly, it's incredibly chilling to see the guy rendered so helpless, but, from his perspective, it did not seem particularly traumatic. As I understand it, if he had not had his mask applied for him at that point, he would have lost consciousness and then died in his sleep shortly thereafter. All things considered, not the WORST way to go. Beats getting stuck in that compartment with a leak and eventually drowning.

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I'm circle jerking here, but Lemmy needs content so I'm gonna inflict it on y'all. It's just nice to hear that the genesis of this project is a bunch of creative people experimenting and seeing what sticks rather than some suit writing "Live Service" on a white board and circling it a bunch. Maybe a dollar sign or two.

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A game which I have started numerous times, and then bounced off of due to the archaic control interface. One of these days I'm going to have to knuckle under and learn how to interact with it, as the concept is cool as hell, and I'm sure the controls become intuitive with practice.

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Grim Dawn is the most fun I've had with an ARPG in years. The class system is very interesting and, as far as I know, unique to this game. Rather than just being a barbarian or necromancer or whatever other typical ARPG class you can think of, your class is determined by selecting any 2 archetypes. For instance, maybe you like being a pet class like necromancer, but you want to have a slightly more active play style than just watching your skellingtons paint the map red. So, you mix in the Nightblade (melee rogue) class at level 10. Your new, combined class is called a Reaper, and you have access to both skill trees, free to mix and match as you wish. Very interesting playstyles can emerge from creative pairings.

I am a casual player so I can't offer any perspective on the endgame or anything like that, but if you're looking for something to scratch the Diablo 2 itch with a fun twist on classes,you cant go wrong with Grim Dawn.

Wrong webcomic. Ctrl + Alt + Del is the name.

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You're correct, HR is there to benefit the company. However, in this case, the goals align. OP wants to stop being sent objectionable material while at work. HR wants employees' actions to not open the company up for litigation. Being able to prove that dickhead is engaging textbook harassment while on the clock should be an open and shut case.

All of this is to be taken with a heaping handful of salt, since regulations differ wildly by jurisdiction, but this seems pretty clear cut to me.

Also, to add to the other poster's point, in a medieval siege, the defenders have every reason to believe the attackers will happily let every man, woman, and child behind the walls die gruesome deaths to starvatiom or disease. That's why, when it came down to the wire, cities would submit.

In modern times, cultivating a believable military posture of, "Surrender, or we will personally execute every last motherfucking one of you" is politically dicey. Look at the news stories coming out of Gaza about supplies running low thanks to Israeli interference. Right, wrong , or indifferent, the international community (as well as your domestic community, if those that disagree with these sorts of tactics are allowed to make their voices heard) tends to look down their noses at targeting noncombatants populations. So, due to these complications (which were largely absent or less impactful from warfare in the time of Genghis Khan) wholesale slaughter of civilian life isn't really openly used. In fact, guidelines like "proportionality" are invented which dictate the level of response you can give certain provocations and what not.

So, if you're a modern day commander being tasked with taking an urban center, the closest way to approximate a medieval siege would be to absolutely carpet bomb everything. Make it known that you will happily let every single person in Moscow die, if not send them to the afterlife yourself. While you're bombing the suburbs, you'll also need to encirce the whole city to prevent supplies from being delivered, since you can't guarantee every bomb will hit it's target and need starvation to provide additional assurance to the population that, if they maintain their current course, they are doomed.

Unfortunately, the world isn't going to allow that, and you know it, so you commit to the level of bombing deemed acceptable by the world at large. At best, you wind up in a situation like London during the Blitz. Your bombing runs are effective, in that they disrupt the daily life of citizenry, and cause some infrastructure damage and loss of life. However, you're never going to be allowed to scale up to the point where your victims feel they have no way out but to submit. There's enough plausible deniability that, even when a bomb hits close to home (literally or figuratively), the victim is more pissed at the bomber than their government.

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Jorphdan (the ph is silent) has dozens of videos exploring the lore of the Dungeons and Dragons multiverse. Those worlds have been the setting for enough videogames that I think it applies.

You might also check out Eckhart's Ladder. He focuses primarily on Star Wars but with some digressions into Halo and other science fiction universes.

One of my personal favorite gaming essayists is Grim Beard, though his particular style may or may not gel with you. His videos are generally about a single game and often encompass a game's conception, development, gameplay, reception, and legacy. It's not exactly a lore channel, per se, but I feel like it might be in the ballpark of what you're looking for.

file770 article written by two journalists who reviewed the committee's emails after one of said committee leaked them to atone for her role in the controversy.

Feel free to read the whole thing. It doesn't take long. If you prefer primary sources, the work-product they refer to is linked within the report. The conclusions the authors draw seems sound based on the evidence. Sure it's possible that the CCP meddled "off-the-record", but to assume that in contrast to what the evidence states seems like hunting for a Boogeyman to confirm our prejudices.

If Russia keeps it up, they might not have those either.

You might be getting confused with the circumstances around Brandon Lee's death on the set of the Crow, which makes sense since that has been a hot topic when discussing the situation on Rust's set. As I understand it, in the case of Lee's death, they had taken live rounds and "converted" them to dummy rounds by removing the bullets, dumping out the gunpowder from the cartridge, and then reinstalling the bullets. However, they did not remove the primer from the cartridges, because they wanted the bottom of the cases to look pristine for shots where the revolver was loaded.

At some point, one of these "dummy" (but still very much not inert, thanks to the primer) rounds was accidentally fired. Because they had removed the propellent, only the primer detonated. This provided enough force to dislodge the bullet from the case, but not enough to expel it out the barrel. No one checked the barrel before a blank was loaded into weapon for the scene where Lee's character was shot. Blank detonated, dummy bullet is dislodged, Lee is killed.

So, while both productions are staggering examples of safety protocol failures on film sets, the circumstances are differ in the details.

Say what you will of the aesthetic being virtually insane, but personally, I think it's supa dupa fly.

Biden has done what he is able to do. He proclaimed presidential pardon for federal marijuana charges in late 2022. However, the executive branch has no authority to impact state level charges, which would likely be the vast majority of people affected by marijuana policing over time. In a world where government works as intended, state level organizations should take their cues from what the federal government is doing, but, as I understand it, they are not necessarily beholden to slavishly adopt the federal posture. Perhaps someone with a deeper understanding might illuminate us further.

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I've definitely gone through the Harry Potter series a couple of times at different phases of my life. Definitely had a different experience with every reading. Not always positive, but at this point it's part of the tapestry of my childhood.

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I think you're being glib, but my assumption is they are using household in the IRS sense, I e. A household consists of any one taxpayer and whoever they can claim as dependents.

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All good! You were in the ballpark, certainly. I read CAD, but not Penny Arcade, and I was there when Loss was uploaded, so the distinction is clear to me.

I disagree with your assessment that far right and populist descriptors are opposites. Admittedly, there's a degree of subjectivity in definitions here, but my understanding is that conventional scholarship has coalesced around a definition of Populism that is agnostic of the left/right spectrum.

For example, this journal article from 2012 defines it as "a thin-centered ideology that considers society to be ultimately separated into two homogeneous and antagonistic groups, the 'pure people' versus the 'corrupt elite', and which argues that politics should be an expression of the general will of the people".

If you care to read a little more, the authors break down their definition into it's constituent pieces and provide context, but the important piece is that you can see how populism can come from both the left and the right.

As examples, we can look at, say, the Occupy Wall Street movement from a while back. Very much spawned from left leaning ideology, but it's defining feature was casting the "corrupt elite" (in this case, the fabulously wealthy) against the general people (i.e. the 99%). On the other side of the coin we can look at Donald Trump's MAGA movement. The image he wants to cultivate is that of an outsider, someone not tainted by the corruption of the Washington elite. That resonates with a sunset of the population.

Both of these movements have radically different goals and politics, but the framework of those arguments follows the same general template.

I apologize for the US-centric examples, but that's what I know. As consolation, the article I linked to is specifically a comparative study of European vs Latin American populism.

Seconding the other poster. Excellent write up; you distilled every rebuttal point I would have made to OP perfectly.

I'm speculating, but perhaps the thought would be that separating Google Search from the rest of the company would deprive them of the alternative revenue streams they used to maintain their market position? If I remember the ruling against them correctly, one of the key pieces of evidence cited by the judge was that Google spent like 30 billion dollars a year to have 3rd parties use their engine by default.

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Man I hope the Red Letter Media boys put together a retrospective in his honor

Oh, never you fear pal, I'm certain that Hasbro has no intention of leaving the cashcow alone. Larian might be moving on to other things, but those ghouls certainly aren't.

Anecdotally, I'd say that this depiction is in line with how I feel my ADHD symptoms present themselves. Now, I don't typically have all of these things going at once, per se, but I will definitely queue up a series of attention sinks and bounce between them as soon as my brain loses interest in the topic being discussed. It's why the TikTok/YouTube Shorts format is so dangerous to my productivity, as it constantly delivers novel entertainment in bite size doses. If I'm medicated, and mindful of my behavior, I am able to shut out alternate attention sinks and focus on one at a time. I guess it's kind of like tunnel vision. That has a negative connotation, but it's super helpful to me since, left to my own devices, I have trouble regulating which stimuli to focus on.

Ymmv, of course.

Don't let her shitty politics get in the way of doing something you enjoy. Death of the author and all that. If you're worried about fiscally supporting her, I'm certain you can find the whole series at reasonable prices in any secondhand bookstore.

Blackgate.com - the remnants of Black Gate magazine, which was published from 2000-2011 and then continued in digital form since. It focuses primarily on vintage literary fantasy, though occasionally the an article will be published in films or new fiction. Of particular note to nerds is the Cinema of Swords column by Lawrence Ellsworth, who fantasy fans may be familiar with as the Principal Narrative Designer for Baldur's Gate 3. I'm not so immersed in the fantasy world that I understand most of what is discussed on the blog, but it is a nice taste of the old Internet, one which might resonate with other fediverse users.

I think you're implying Andre aged the worst, considering his present situation, but, hell, out of the three I think he might have "aged" the best. In the foot notes of history, Andre will be remembered for being a pretty avuncular fella. Those other two? Not so much.