The term “flashpoint” has nothing to do with assigning blame. It just defines an event/place where things kicked off into something way bigger. If WW3 started due to a strike on Taiwan it would be accurate to refer to Taiwan as a flashpoint, because the conflict in Taiwan would be the origin. I don’t see how any of that takes away from China being the aggressor, or why the conflict would happen.

I get wanting to make it clear China is the problem here, I agree, but we have terms that refer to things objectively for a reason. You don’t have to say everything at once with every sentence.

I don’t think it would prompt some kind of vindictive vote. That side of it is only going to energize those who were vehemently republican anyway. Republicans would hammer on any and all sympathy they can eke from having their candidate assassinated (regardless of the truth they will say it was the left, and at best people will think the guy was just crazy), and the average person only half paying attention will eat it up. Dems would be even more hamstrung in their rhetoric against the GOP considering the gravity of an event like that. Even with that aside, they’re now running Joe Biden against whichever face the GOP tells their voters to line up behind – who you can bet will be all in on the kind of stuff that will do even more lasting damage to our country. Biden is not a strong candidate, and without the uniquely unlikable personality and character of Trump I’m not sure there’s enough motivation amongst voters to carry him to another term.

But all of that was a lot to type, so I just said it would give them a massive boost

I tentatively agree. The man himself I have no sympathy for, but an assassination of presidential nominee would have made everything even worse. GOP would get a huge boost, and could replace Trump with someone that is actually competent enough to fully implement their 2025 treason-esque bullshit. Not to mention how much that would have inflamed an already looney tunes level of political discourse.

It’s also just not how we should do things in America. Call me a hopeless patriot, but we should try to live up to the ideals we espouse.

Interestingly enough, 2/3 of those are subs I dropped within the last year or so based on a lack of quality/content for what they cost (never bothered with ESPN, NHL games are easy to find). Seems like streaming is starting to collapse a lot quicker than TV did.

It’s a skill issue. It’s takes intelligence to conceptualize an issue or idea without accepting it. Seems many people talking about Israel/Palestine (in terms of everyday people) just aren’t bright enough to break it down for themselves.

The whole thing is a legit clusterfuck. Israel has been commiting war crimes against Palestinians for as long as I’ve been alive, and Palestine’s de facto government is a legit terrorist organization who has done some unforgivable things. In the middle you have everyday people suffering for no reason beyond being born in the “wrong” place, and being further radicalized by unconscionable IDF actions. There’s no good guy on either side (in terms of those capable of taking action on a collective scale), and that breaks the brains of some. People ignorantly want a cut and dry solution, and a bad side to rail against, much more than they want to actually understand the issue and it’s causes.

I’m not sure the comment calling for regulation is a corporate shill. It’s a pretty level-headed look at things imo, because the truth is YT cannot afford to operate for free. We live in a system that just doesn’t allow that, for better or worse. Unfortunately, the way we went about funding things on the internet (outside of ridiculous amounts of capital flowing to startups for years, which doesn’t really apply to YT/Google) was ads, and they have gotten wildly out of hand. This is on top of an insane amount of data harvesting. We have to face the reality that any major, data-heavy platform like YT is going to need significant revenue.

We need a solution to either lower the cost of (opening things up for individuals to host), or more efficiently fund, services we like if they’re going to stick around in the current state of the world. Even if we say “google can eat the cost” we’re still putting all our faith in the goodwill of an entity that is designed to do the opposite of what we’re asking. That’s begging for issues.

Peer-to-peer stuff is the best solution I’ve seen, or self-hosting. I’m far from an expert, but from what I understand the tech just isnt there yet for it to become the norm. All that data has to go somewhere, and storage is prohibitively expensive at a certain point.

How do you know those aren’t far-right cats?

Jokes on them, my limit is wildly low compared to this. Most sports games are worth 20 bucks max at this point, the main content is just reskinned gameplay with updated stats and an unnecessary twist on controls. Its DLC.

They don’t, they just get ready to clutch their pearls and say “well, I never…” when it happens again. These people are from the same stock that let Hitler rise to power, and thought appeasement was the best way to deal with aggressive authoritarians. Anything short of full liberation of Ukraine’s territory only encourages Russian belligerence.

You want to save lives? You make it clear to Russia this kind of shit will only leave them bloodied and empty handed.

There’ve been fantastic CRPGs in the last handful of years. Off the top of my head: Divinity Original Sin 2 (2017), PoE/PoE2(2015/2018), Tyranny(2016), Torment: Tides of Numenera(2017), Pathfinder Kingmaker/WotR(2018/2021), and Disco Elysium¹ (2019).

There’s definitely been a comeback, I feel like I’ve been eating good on that side for a while now.

¹Play this game if you haven’t. It’s so fucking good

can’t use it to coordinate political action against their regime.

That ship sailed a while back when Elon was forced to buy Twitter. Let it burn.