I can explain what’s going through my head for you. I downvoted you because your purely factual statement seems to completely miss and is entirely irrelevant to my point – that coercing a child to declare themselves an adult in the eyes of a particular social group, to declare that they have the agency to consider such a thing that is supposed to be a LIFE LONG decision, is straight up wrong.

Doesn’t matter if it has been in place for a century, if age 13 is an outlier, or if you think 16 is old enough because that’s when you had to do it. It’s whack, and your justification is whack. I downvoted you instead of engaging because most of the time it’s not worth entertaining someone who justifies the cult I was indoctrinated into as a child, from which I had to spend many years deconstructing the hate for others – often the lowliest groups of individuals – that Catholicism had fomented in my child and adolescent heart. Forgive my harshness, but I’m not going to act like this thing that made me into a spiteful hateful kid – towards the exact groups of people that Jesus tells us to love the most – is a good thing.

It’s a constant problem because its a cult that wants to protect its cult members. It finds no issue with indoctrinating kids, to the point where nobody batted an eye when they recently (like, in the past 10 years) decreased the age at which children go through the sacrament of Confirmation. The same sacrament that is meant to affirm your adulthood in the church, where you say, “I may have been told to practice this by my parents before, but now I’m an adult now and choose to practice it of my own volition.”

They do this when children are thirteen years old. Thirteen.

When I was fifteen I did not have the capacity to make this decision for myself. Now I have to live with the fact I’m on a list somewhere as an adult in the church. The Catholic Church is an evil institution that uses trauma for the purpose of coercion.

Spoken like a true 12 year old. Lmao

Wow, I gave you a lot of benefit of the doubt in my comments, but you’re really out here to just denigrate other people’s tastes, aren’t you? How refined, how cultured your game library must be. How sweet your shit must smell. How does it feel up there, where you’ll never touch a game frequented by us Dorito-eaters and us Mountain-Dew-drinkers? Feels good, huh? Feels better.

What a fucking joke.

For sure for sure. I definitely read it that way, in part, because I have to consciously remind myself that my taste is my own and I should try not to dismiss people who like their art to be more…palatable, i guess? Because I have the capacity to be that guy, unfortunately. So I try to watch a blockbuster every once in a while, so to speak.

I think it was probably the comparison between GTA and Madden and CoD that threw me, because they have almost no similarities besides being AAA.

Their comment kinda reminded me of how the Kingdom Come: Deliverance fandom can be. I mean, I fucking love KCD and KCD2, they’re two of the best games I’ve ever played. They can slow AF though, and frustrating at times. But whenever someone mentions that, or that they didn’t like it, someone else invariably comes along and completely dismisses their opinion, like “You just don’t understand it,” or “Maybe you just don’t have the attention span to really immerse yourself.” It’s like dude, you don’t need to make someone feel bad for not liking a game.

I think GTA online could be compared to Madden and CoD in that they all have aggressive(-ly lame) monetization tactics. But the way jordanlund frames it (sorry jordan, I don’t mean to rag on you – like I said, I can also be like this) sounds more to me like a “i only listen to artists with less than 1000 monthly listeners” type of statement

I get it’s a massive franchise, like Madden or Call of Duty… don’t buy those either.

whew, I’m trying to understand your comment, but this is kinda coming off pretty…holier-than-thou? Which, I do get that because I can find myself like that with movies/tv, but still…we gotta let people like what they like.

In this case though, I honestly think this is a pretty terrible comparison. Madden and CoD don’t have massive single player appeal that GTA or RDR have. They are total schlock in that regard (though, I hear CoD’s recent campaigns are actually good).

GTA and RDR on the other hand very skillfully mix elements of RPG, immersive sim, and adventure game. They’re huge sandboxes for the player to explore and discover new things, within which are nestled very well written stories that critique modern life and touch upon themes that, yes, you could find them in various indie games if you look a bit, but are somewhat unique in the blockbuster gamescape. It’s difficult to find other single player games with the scope of Rockstar games, though I think it is getting easier.

But comparing GTA to Madden or CoD is kinda whack unless you’re looking at GTA Online in isolation.

Darktable is a godsend to me for converting film negatives.But I pretty much only use image conversion, RGB curve, then fidget with the exposure and RGB sliders in negadoctor a little more then I’m done. No idea how to do anything else.

Btw for anyone reading this, the original is about a US judge of Mexican heritage who was presiding over the Trump University fraud case.

Trump didn’t actually say this about Pope Francis, as far as we know.

another 11th hour reversal

https://www.forbes.com/sites/kateoflahertyuk/2025/04/16/cve-program-funding-cut-what-it-means-and-what-to-do-next/

dumbest timeline

I mean yeah you’re right, that’s what it should mean. But that’s not what they mean by it. They want to “run the government like a business.” That means cutting costs and distributing the cheapest product possible in order to maximize profit. It doesn’t make sense, but it doesn’t have to for their base to gobble it up.

Government efficiency is really just the worst possible version of a product or service that the market will continue to accept.

And even that isn’t what they’re going for. They’re just smashing the government to privatize everything. If a service doesnt get privatized, well you’re shit outta luck

If the upholding of your “rights” is dependent on which administration is in power, you don’t have rights.

Sure dude but in this case your comment comes off as if you were a huge elitist asshole. I mean, maybe you’re not. It’s just that your comment sounds as if it could be written by one. As if you’re just better than the OP because you can understand the complicated, intricate, dynamic mechanics of a game and OP is just not… whatever… enough to “get it”, and that they should just go play this simpler, one-dimensional, easy game, that they don’t even have to pay attention to.

It’s like you went to see an indie art-house film with your friend, and upon hearing that they didn’t like it as much as you did, you say “that’s okay, you’re probably just not smart enough to get it. Maybe you should just watch Marvel movies from now on.”

Just major, major asshole vibes. And I’m saying this as a KCD stan.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5RpPTRcz1no

Directly targeting schools that allow protests

Sounds like a constitutional crisis to me, no?

There’s a perspective that some technologically literate people have (not all of them, certainly) that enables them a clearer view of what is going on re: tech oligarchs. That is how much we rely on other people’s computers. Most people don’t think about what is going on when they browse a website or post something on social media, set up their own shop on squarespace, sell a product on Amazon, stream music or TV or movies or games.

Giant tech companies own it all. They own the computer you use to do all these things. They own the computers other smaller businesses use to run their companies. You invented a product and want to drive your cart to the market square? Pay a tax to King Bezos, the market square is Amazon. Did you make a game? Pay Gaben and you can sell it at his marketplace. Don’t wanna use these marketplaces? Wanna set up your own shop? You still have to use Amazon’s, or Microsoft’s, or Google’s computers.

These tech oligarchs are more like feudal lords – enclosing lands (computers) and charging the peasants and merchants access to them.

It’s still kinda janky IMO, and there are some parts where the performance can tank. But I’m not really treating as a fast-paced action game so it doesn’t really affect my enjoyment.

I’ve really been enjoying Kingdom Come: Deliverance and swapping between my PC and SteamDeck. It runs pretty well on the Deck. Reminds me of how I felt playing Skyrim. Excited to get to the sequel.