Exactly. Nintendo is not our friend, but it’s also playing by the rules it has available to it. It’s the rulemaker’s fault if the rules are shite.

As a publically traded company in the current system, Nintendo is not in the business of making video games, it’s in the business of making shareholder value. Video games are just a tool for doing that, exactly how a PC is a tool for writing documents or developing software. At the end of the day, companies have more than one tool at their disposal, and are going to use all of them to compete.

It’s on us to take away the tools we don’t think they should have access to, not on them to voluntarily not use the ones that are in play.

It’s the slow but inevitable achievement of end-state of a system designed to re-frame and re-centralize power in the hands of the elite following the liberalization of political power.

This is its purpose. It always has been.

Way less weird than Venus. Poor Venus, nobody ever notices its quirks.

Regular reminder that prices are not based on what something’s component pieces are worth, but what people are willing to pay.

Nah. This is the sort of thing you get when different features are owned by different dev teams.

Didn’t spend all of their time arguing about idological purity online and actually pushed to achieve their agenda.

It’s patently bizarre how a company whose only purpose is transferring money from account A to B can then arbitrarily decide what people are allowed to buy and sell.

This is the whole point of capitalism. Those who control the systems, control the people, and capital exists to ensure that the people do not control the systems.

Yup. This is purposeful mischaracterization from one of the biggest boosters of games-as-a-streaming-product. Ubisoft doesn’t want you to have the ability to play things at your whim, but exclusively at theirs. They sure as fuck don’t want you spending your time on something they sold you 10 years ago.

Don’t worry, this isn’t something they actually believe. They’re just trying to craft a narrative. I worked there for 5 years, and in that whole time nobody on the publishing end of the company said anything that even hinted at them giving a shit about fun.

Quick Time Events; characters that automatically do 60 things just by holding down “forward” on the joystick; the Ubisoft logo.

Gotta keep going. Not all signatures are going to be legit, so a reasonable buffer needs to be in place.

Ignoring the world definitely makes you good global citizens and not problems to work around. Good job. Way to go.

NodeBB. It’s a fairly popular webforum, but ActivityPub support is fairly new. It’s really something else to see the Fediverse through a the lens of the old Internet.

Because there is zero trust that this won’t be a one-sided liberalization, in favour of the fascists.

“We’re the front page of the Internet!”

“No, not like that…”

Voting like this is a bit of a dark pattern, though. Especially downvotes. They come from places where the platform owners want to download the responsibility of community management to the community itself. This has a nasty tendency to silence valid criticism while simultaniously supporting brigading behaviour.

At the very least, we should be having serious, design-focused discussions about eliminating or highly restricting downvotes.

My ex is surrounded by support, from the same people who I thought were my best friends.

This is the reason why. Your ex has managed to control the narrative and has manipulated the social atmosphere to ice you out. Emotional abusers are often very good at this. They mamipulate everyone around them.

And they are really good at choosing their abuse victims. They know who they can love bomb, who they can isolate, and who will keep their mouth shut.

I have been there. Watched people I thought were friends just evaporate, choosing their relationship with my ex over me. Realizing they were never my friends, they were “ours”, and ij the end they stuck by her, the more openly social and boistrous one.

It’s taken a long time, and many different therapists, but I’ve come to accept my experiences as abuse, as not my fault, and… sometimes… that I am worthy of love, friendship, and happiness.

I have found the books The Body Keeps the Score and Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving (available as audio books), as well as videos on toxic shame and attachment by Heidi Prieb, very helpful.

I know the words feel hollow, because they feel so far the opposite of true, but you are not alone. Many others have been through what you’ve endured, and have made it out the other side. There are people out there who will, one day, be so very glad to have you in their lives.

Some day, when you’re ready – and much earlier than I did, I implore you – you should join some activity groups. Take up a recreational sport, join a gaming group, take group acting lessons, join a choir… anything that is a) casual and b) a group activity. Bonus points if it’s something you always enjoyed, buy your ex tried to excise from your life. This will help you rebuild your social network, and let you reconnect with yourself.

Physical activity and a healthy diet is also important here. It may be the last thing you want to do, but it actively helps fight all of your worst psychic injuries. Not only is it physiologically good for you, it’s psychologicallly good for you. You know that it’s good for you; your brain knows it. Doing healthy things means choosing to care about yourself. You need to actively choose yourself at every step of the way. It trains your mind to see yourself as worthy of care.

Oh, and ritually burn things that were hers, or that were shared and tied to your relationship. You don’t need them. You don’t need her. You’re going to be better off without her.

I bet door-to-door salespeople would make way more money if they could just break into your homes, leave their junk on your table, and steal your credit card, and yet we don’t let them do that.

Right. But when the bar is owned by a Nazi, your options for pushing them out of the bar becomes a lot more limited.

“Reviewers” need to understand that, unless they paid their own money, from a bog-standard store, on or after release day, they are not reviewers, they are hired spokespeople.