I’m of two minds on this. I agree that fewer safe spaces for bigots is fantastic and pushes back against the normalization of some really vile things as “just an opinion”, “just joking”, “voicing all sides”, “making up funny stories about famous people”, “just boys being boys”, or other means of “criticizing” those in power.

However, we are ACTIVELY sliding down the slippery slope that people have been calling a fallacy for over a decade, and watching the same arguments used to create spaces free from the most hateful people on the internet get twisted and co-opted by those same people to ban and punish genuine criticism of atrocities and voices against abuses of power.

There are sacrifices with either choice more akin to a check in chess than an opportunity to choose a truly better outcome. Seeing all the good other Minecraft communities have done in making libraries and humanitarian resources available in creative ways gives me hope, but watching a government bedbuddy of a company like Microsoft start with the easy win of banning Nazis and bigots makes me really hope that thats truly their focus and not an opening to take out some of the amazing and creative workarounds people have done to combat censorship and human rights abuses in their own Minecraft way.

Genuinely curious:

Is the author saying that ACO and VBC were decent ideas that got UHG’s fingers grafted into the legal structure, or are they just saying that ACO and VBC are bad in general?

And I knew that we had some awful structures within our healthcare system, but I LOATHE UHG and didn’t realize that they OWN our medical system. Disgusting.

So Prey team made Redfall and Dishonored team is making the new Blade game? Good to know!

Been playing Dishonored for the first time and really enjoying it. I’m only at the bridge and trying to play a low/no kill game. I’m not succeeding just yet, but it’s been really enjoyable and they do stealth really well. I’m baffled that they mismanaged to get the team that made this and Prey to push out Redfall? Man.

Just picked up FFVII after the second or third hiatus or my third or fourth attempt to play it. FINALLY made it to the Nibelheim story and past Midgard. And that somehow still manages to work on me as a first time player.

Just beat Banner Saga 1 and have never felt so much like a failure after “beating” a game. That game is trying to unseat This War of Mine for decisions regretted/minute.

I’m wanting to start up my Nintendo series playthroughs again by either starting Mario Galaxy 2 or trying to remember what on earth was happening in Majora’s Mask (3DS) something about the water temple maybe?

I beat Hyper Light Drifter for the first time. And I think I spent some time on the new Mario kart levels, though that might have been last week.

HLP is a fascinating game with a novel approach to gameplay and world building. A few controls issues annoyed me, but they were growing pains and not fully learning the system. I love games that use that particular art style. I think I’m doing Mario Galaxy next.

I’m trying to figure out my second Voucher game to get.

My top choices are: Arceus - I enjoy pokemon, but it sounds like a lot of “research” busy work. Pikmin 4 - I haven’t clicked with Pikmin demos previously, but the idea has always seemed pretty interesting if I’d let it go farther. Mario Wonder - feels shorter, and more peripheral to my interest, but I’ve heard great things. Xenoblade 3 - I’ve only played XBX before and not all the way through. RPGs aren’t completely my thing, but I’ve heard great things.

None of them are THE game I’m after with pros and cons to each. The decision paralysis is rough and I don’t see anything worth waiting for before May.

That game should be mailed directly to dictators and war mongers everywhere.

“THIS. THIS is what you want for your people? For ANY people? “

For me, my “misery is the point” game was This War of Mine. I got it just before Ukraine, but still couldn’t stomach it. My first character had a kid that was constantly crying and whimpering and I just couldn’t do it. I was bad at it—if you can be good. I couldn’t help others in the ways that I wanted to. I couldn’t stop the whimpering. Then I went out as someone else and came back and the dad and kid left. And I had to stop there for a bit.

I set it down to come back later, then Ukraine happened. Where it was hard to stomach while I knew this was hypothetical and the Euro-setting was pretty abstracted from the current reality there—though still very present elsewhere—knowing that people on the ground were looking and sounding similar to what was happening in game and seeing that in news daily just cut off any desire I had to play. It’s powerful and DEEPLY empathetic, but that spiral of misery and failure was the point and it made it in spades.

That man put out fantastic videos. I’d love to see him continue to do so.

This is one of the finest.

To your edit, OP said ONLY the melons, no other fruit.

This is a gross overreach. Just stop.

I feel like the sci-fi trope of an ai that chews through everything in its way to achieve a single goal with no consideration for complexity or other factors isn’t sci-fi, but it also isn’t the ai that’s doing it. There are groups like the ESRB who simply want to reduce their job to a single goal with no consideration for complexity or other factors likely these children’s privacy (which should be one of ESRB’s goals, arguably).

Just like in those stories, these groups are chewing through other aspects of life that are absolutely significant in order to optimize a single metric to the exclusion of all else.

This week? I barely grabbed a few minutes on TotK, about to grab a few sage masks.

Currently, though, I’m playing TotK and Garden story. I finished Shredders revenge last week and am about to start Planet of Lana.

TotK is all consuming and so incredible, but I take breaks with other stuff and have REALLY been enjoying Garden story—cute, kind, and delightful.