Lianodel @ Lianodel @ttrpg.network

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2 yr. ago

You're pretty much describing a scene from Batman: Year One. He crashes a party full of rich people to intimidate them. It's actually the good Frank Miller comic I was talking about.

Time to take a meme on the internet too seriously! :D

There are two things that bug me about the weirdly frequent discourse on Batman.

Firstly, there's no one version of Batman. You can find bastard fascist Batman, and you can find actual justice Batman. Hell, you can find both by Frank Miller, depending on the point in his career. My favorite version is from The Animated Series, and you'll find tons of examples of Batman using kindness and compassion to affect meaningful change, instead of reveling in violence as though it solves anything. Heck, he's nicer to working-class folks, even sympathetic criminals, than to his fellow rich people.

Secondly, I think it's a talking point with bad optics. Batman rules. Why let the fascists have him? If there are loads of ways to look at and interpret the character, I'd rather focus on the one that makes him the good kind of class traitor, anti-fascist, anti-cop, and fighting for economic and social justice.

I'm sorry, but I can't be optimistic about this.

Even if we accept it was bait, and not just the DNC pivoting to the right, I think it was a losing move. Who is this going to sway? Republicans aren't the kind to be well-informed and swayed by the changing circumstance of current events, so it won't peel any of them away. As for the rest, it just shrank the differences between the two parties, whether practically or purely optically. It's not like this just finally demonstrated that the Republicans were a fucking joke of a party when it comes to actual governance.

So we showed that the Republicans are incompetent hypocrites, as though that's new information, and as if that realization would change any hearts or minds. And in exchange for this completely worthless prize, all it cost us was a now bipartisan consensus to push The Big Lie about immigrants. I don't consider that a victory.

The DNC is still the lesser evil, and there's still a significant margin. I just wish that margin was growing because the Democrats were moving left, not because they're both moving right but at different speeds.

Also... we've seen this happen before. Hillary loses to Trump, we live through four years of a fascist administration (and all the shit that comes with it), then in 2020... we get Biden.

That user is, simultaneously, using criticisms of Biden to justify recreating the conditions that brought him into office.

And that user also used the Palestinians to justify letting the DNC lose to Trump, even though Trump is even more bigoted and pro-Israel. It's saying the best "strategy" to voice discontent over the genocide is to... accelerate it.

I'm not willing to go through four years of fascism, then if we get to vote again in 2028—which we wouldn't be able to take for granted—likely get some other milquetoast conservative Democrat. I'd rather spend the next four years trying to fight and push Democrats to the left than to fight GOP fascists.

...this might be why I like hiking and camping, now that I think about it.

Honestly, same. I just got in the habit of checking quotations before posting them, so I got the full version with actual source.

"All men have an emotion to kill; when they strongly dislike some one they involuntarily wish he was dead. I have never killed any one, but I have read some obituary notices with great satisfaction."

—Clarence Darrow

My halfway-optimistic view is that fascism is doomed to fail. It's just too stupid not to, and the stupidity is core to the entire movement.

...but the half-way pessimistic part of me has to bring up that they're going to do as much damage as they can on the way down. Hopefully that's kept to a minimum.

If you value freedom of expression, that doesn't mean you need to extend that to people who fundamentally oppose it. To maximize freedom of expression, you can't tolerate the people who would outright destroy it.

It's also a slippery slope argument. We can just crack down on Nazis. And as for the government cracking down on other groups... they already do that. We see crackdowns on plenty of other demonstrations, with more repression and violence. Tolerating Nazis isn't helping the good guys, because people in power don't care about applying the rules evenly. Besides, even if we took the slippery slope seriously, then we have to consider what happens when we just let literal Nazis go about their business.

Everyone. Everyone. The article is five SENTENCES long.

Two climate activists on Tuesday targeted Botticelli’s masterpiece “The Birth of Venus” hanging at Florence’s Uffizi Gallery, attaching images of recent flood damage in the Tuscany region on the protective glass.

(Emphasis mine. I also wanted to pause to mention that this is likely a sentence you wouldn't have to click through to read, because it's in the preview on Lemmy.)

Authorities immediately cleared the room and the two protesters were brought by carabinieri for questioning. Under a new law, the protesters risk up to six months of jail time.

The protest materials were easily removed from the glass without leaving a trace, and the room where the painting hangs was reopened within 15 minutes.

The activists from the Last Generation climate movement said they were protesting the Italian government’s failure to address climate issues that result in more frequent floods and landslides, including severe flooding in Tuscany last year that left at least six people dead and caused widespread damage.

I'm sorry, but complaints about any damage done by this protest aren't exactly serious arguments.

I will, begrudgingly, when my friends run a game. Playing it is okay, running it is a nightmare, and I really don't want to spend money on this game.

It's a shame, because D&D has been a huge part of my life, but nowadays, when I want to play D&D, the best way to do it isn't to use D&D.

And that's if they even offer a physical version. I'm betting we'll see a lot of digital-only content. And if you want to use it in the official VTT, I imagine the monetization is going to be even worse.

Correct about physical books, and I doubt physical books are going away. However, WotC has been leaning towards digital distribution, and hired on people with experience in software-as-a-service.

By all means, keep playing the version of the game you own! But it looks like the future of D&D might make a lot of content available to rent, not to own. Hopefully I'm wrong, but honestly, there are plenty of other games that let you own your stuff.

Yeah. On the face of it, it's a good move, but the full story is far worse.

• They "updated" the OGL to be far more restrictive, impose unsustainable fees past a certain level of gross profit, and would grant WotC the full right to use, sell, and even license your work to others, irrevocably.
• They tried to de-authorize the original OGL retroactively, fully against the spirit and practice of the license, using some legal chicanery. While the OGL 1.0a was perpetual, it didn't use the word irrevocable. (WotC's rights to your content, of course, were clearly put in irrevocable terms).
• They only moved to CC-BY after public outcry. While the results were good, it was for PR, not out of the goodness of their hearts.
• There's a new edition coming anyway. Unless they surprise me and put it under CC-BY as well, I'm betting they'll try again to use a really restrictive license.

Also, even though WotC walked back from de-authorizing the OGL 1.0a, the damage was done. Every publisher I'm aware of that had used it has since moved away from it entirely, with surprisingly little change to the product.

True, but (a) IIRC, not all 5e books are even available as PDFs, and (b) D&D seems to be leaning towards a service business model. I doubt they'll get rid of books entirely, but still, Paizo has a more straightforward "buy the thing, own the thing" approach.

Peskov claimed on Wednesday that Carlson’s position on the conflict with Ukraine is “not pro-Russian by any means, and it’s not pro-Ukrainian; rather, it’s pro-American. But at least it stands in clear contrast to the position of the traditional Anglo-Saxon media.”

Pffft hahaha, what a fucking racist dork. That's some 4chan-level shit.

Also, while I think it's overall a good article, I think calling Tucker a useful idiot is unfair. When I think of a useful idiot, I think of someone who means well, but is on the wrong side without realizing it. Tucker's not a smart man, but he knows what he's doing. If you ever watch his shit (which I only recommend to verify his grift), he's not just disconnected from reality, but actively contrary to it. He's trying to poison the well, while inoculating his viewers to reality and any argument based on it. He's not simply wrong, he's lying. He knows what he's doing is wrong, but he's doing it anyway, for his own benefit.

Well, they don't care about their own hypocrisy. They're happy to paint their opponents as hypocrites, even if they have to make something up to do it.

My friend just went through this recently.

She had significant sinus problems, one side being blocked entirely. Went to see her doctor, went to see a specialist, tried some things, but what she needed was surgery to get rid of polyps. She schedules it, takes off of work, gets a blood test, goes to the surgical center, and as she is being prepped for surgery, finds out they have to cancel, because her insurance was denying a part of the procedure.

What a huge fucking waste of time and money.

She did get a reason in the rejection letter, but it just pissed me off even more. The insurance company has a "doctor" who said the procedure might not be necessary, so they want to try doing X and Y first. Things she's already done. Things her PMC doctor and specialist already know, but this one asshole who sold his soul to an insurance company gets paid to skim shit and say "no." There are plenty of people in the insurance company structure to hate, but some of them are outright scum.

Also, to state the obvious, this is just slowing down the misery machine, when we should be dismantling it. I know it will help people, it's a small victory, and the Republicans will want to turbo-charge said misery machine, but still.

I was just listening to the OAN coverage of this (through another channel commenting on it). You know what genuinely shocked me?

She's not even playing the halftime show! They made up this batshit insane conspiracy theory because she's going to be attending the Superbowl!

It was some of the most deranged, grotesque propaganda I've ever seen. The idea that people take this as serious reporting is genuinely disturbing.

I never said that, to be fair.

Of course there are conspiracies. People in power want to stay in power, and they'll do shady things to get what they want.

That's not the same as conspiracist ideation, which is a tendency to believe in conspiracy theories. Even as the article I quoted said, it can be harmful or pathological, but isn't necessarily. It's just when it happens to an extreme level. There's a difference between rational fears and phobias; intrusive thoughts are normal, but can be frequent, uncontrollable, and distressing; conspiracies can be true, but then there's buck wild nonsense like Q, "Cultural Marxism," and this shit about the Superbowl. It's not recognizing conspiracies when presented with evidence, it's spinning conspiracy theories out of nothing, and viewing everything as part of a master plot, even if it doesn't make any goddamn sense.