I don’t even know what Mastodon looks like and I don’t know who the guy is, but I’m just assuming he’s lying because it sounds like the usual “crazy pronoun libs” dog whistle.

The Egyptians have Ramses

Uh? Ramesses was human - all 11 of them were. Egypt has the likes of Ra, Osiris, Anubis and so on, who I don’t think are particularly tyranical in their stories.

For China, the actual mythology stuff is a lot of creation myth, but they do have a few stories about a divine emperor crushing an army of demons, and it turns out a lot of that is actually about conquering less developed, more nomadic cultures to unify China (Japan pretty much did the same, creation myth then crushing foreign demons that are actually literally foreigners not under their rule). And then there’s the whole mandate of Heaven that they used to justify dynasties rising and falling, mixing up history into myth, that began when a government that started well ended up being seen as tyranical after a few centuries (the Shang, ending with Zhou and Daji).

Older, more primordial mythologies just start at world creation myth, and then talk about humans figuring out how to settle the land, and how the universe works. Mesopotamian cultures mostly focus on defeating the forces of nature, which does involve standing up to violent gods or monsters, but that comes from trying to build up a civilization that can survive disasters, and is actually not tied to tyranical human rulers. Any civilization needs to start with things like water control, that’s why everyone from China to Greece also have that. Sumerians specifically have cities that go to war with each other because “the chief god of their city told them to”, which is obviously manipulation to secure resources, but isn’t particularly tyranical against their own people. And then the Bronze Age Collapse happens, after which the myth of Ishbi and Erra shows a war god who gets petty and kills everyone because people didn’t pay attention to him. So again, the stories of tyranical gods come from people trying to survive and explain destruction events, from nature or from outside forces. When the Assyrians go around killing everyone, Sennacherib destroys Babylon out of anger and frustration - he tries to write a story about the god of Babylon ordering him to do that, and another story of his own god putting the same god of Babylon on trial for some crime, but that doesn’t stick and Sennacherib gets murdered.

At some point it’s not easy to distinguish mythology and simply literature. For China specifically, Journey to the West and Investiture of the Gods talk a lot about the bureaucracy and hierarchy of the Heavens, the oppression of gods and demons - but they’re 16th century novels, are they really mythology? Those stories clearly became popular because people felt oppressed by tyrants, so the myths about tyranical gods can of course be a reaction to the people experiencing tyranical rule. Sun Wukong’s story famously starts because the various systems of the Heavens can’t contain him (and mankind), only Buddha can - but then that’s still a 16 c. novel that showed up long after the creation of Buddhist “mythology”, its spiritual structure and divine figures.

So there’s multiple reasons for stories to pop up about gods becoming tyrants, either because the people get upset at actual tyrant kings, or because one country tries to justify the destruction of another country. But there’s a distinction to be made about stories written as piece of literature and when they become actual civilization building myths that is a fundamental part of its culture. The older a civilization develops and gets centralized, the more opportunities you get for anyone to write more stories that become myth a few hundred years later. If that civilization has ups and downs, the stories about gods are more likely to reflect that. (I think Egypt got out of that because it actually collapsed 3 times, and kept starting over with new gods doing the same things, none of the unified kingdoms lasted more that 500 years)

the people of Europe showing that unlike their governments, they do not tolerate genocidal apartheid supporters

I don’t know the details for each country, but as a Western European, it seems to me that apart from Germany, European governments are generally trying to distance themselves from Israel more and more, so there’s that. I can’t tell what each country does in details and in facts, but it’s the impression I’m getting. I know France has taken a couple punishing actions like banning them from an important military sales show and calling for a ban on weapon sales. Anyone knows if other countries have done similar things or the opposite?

Exactly, they announced earlier this year that they were working on reviving a bunch of licences, including Crazy Taxi, Jet Set Radio, Shinobi, Golden Axe, Streets of Rage, and hinting at a longer list. We don’t know yet eactly how many titles that includes, and which of them will get remakes, remasters, or brand new games, but it was hinting brand new. Early dev footage was leaked at some point for Crazy Taxi and Shinobi.

Project Justice is coming back in the next Capcom Fighting Collection, some time next year. Along with Plasma Blade, CvS Pro and CvS2, etc.

It was always over 11k total, but the first time it came to public news in a big article was about a specific shipment of 2 or 3K one or two weeks ago for the first arrivals. Those early articles were already mentioning both numbers without being very clear. In the following week, reports from Ukraine and the Pentagon kept coming public about the total force actually making it to Ukrainian land.

Shadow of Mordor/war scratch the same itsch as assassin’s creed

??? It’s the first time I’m hearing Shadow of Mordor allows you to run around famous places in ultra popular historical periods.

The US interpretation of free speech is not what the world considers free speech.

You’re misreading it (unless you’re against gay marriage I suppose) - the article tries to break it down, but it’s still a mess.

The plaintiffs are the pro same-sex couples that complained that the state is wrong to refuse same-sex marriage. They appealed to get a better ruling than what they got at first. The second ruling is still not everything they wanted, but it’s still much better than before the complain.

Alpha 3 on Playstation made you work a bit on the tour mode to unlock Guile, Evil Ryu, Shin Akuma (raise a character to level xyz). Shin Bison might also have only been selectable after beating him somewhere.

the Alpha/Zero and EX series did that (Alpha 3 on PSX made you work a little bit to unlock the PSX exclusive characters/forms), then there was also CvS and some of the Marvel games, but that was mixed in with a point and shop system I think.

Hebrew used a generic word for fruit, all languages translated that word as their version of apple which was generic at the time, and then much later, all languages changed the meaning of their word for apple, it’s not specific to French. The use of apple for one specific fruit is fairly recent - more recent than the King James Bible, even.

I don’t know what the word in Hebrew is and if it also changed its meaning since then, though.

and I don’t even use them on my PS5 because I prefer 60+ FPS to graphical fidelity I can’t even see the difference in.

So the idea of the PS5 Pro is basically to play with the same graphic quality as graphic mode, but with the performance of performance mode.

If you’re saying you don’t even need graphic mode on your PS5, then obviously you don’t need a PS5 Pro. But there are people who want both 4K and 60 FPS. They’re not that many, but they’re vocal, and that’s what the PS5 Pro is trying to sell.

“I don’t even have a bike, so what’s the point of all those bike helmet sales?”

I can’t believe we haven’t learned anything since “it’s about ethics in games journalism”. “It’s about monetization in AAA games” now, apparently.

I totally agree that there has been a hate campaign about DEI right-wing complains, but there’s two subjects that came to head at the same time here because it was on the same big title:

Star Wars Outlaw and AC Shadows had the same business model, Star Wars showed that it failed, and Ubisoft got spooked and said they’d have another look at the monetization model for AC. People did get pissed at both games when their business models with passes and editions everywhere were revealed.

It’s just that AC also had at the same time the matter of racist and misogynist hate because of the protagonists. I don’t think this happened on Star Wars, and the fact that it failed too shows that it isn’t the only complain people are having against Ubisoft.

Apparently the monetization guy is stepping on the minority hate campaign subject, he’s the one conflating the two problems here just because his job title. We shouldn’t forget that Ubisoft did pull an infuriating and deplorable stunt with that monetization model.

No one blames New York on the Avengers, or even on Thor. It only gets serious with Sokovia, which is entirely Tony’s fault going off the rails in secret. It’s also introduced slowly and early, with a woman blaming Tony for her son’s death in Avengers I think (before the Iron Man thing), which starts him early on facing his guilt and responsibility, leading to his fuck-up.

No one has MvC2 on any playable system today, because it was removed at some point from all digital stores. Not counting the obvious piracy choice, the MvC2 community that’s still going strong has been crying for a rerelease for literally two decades. So that collection has a decent chance of doing notable numbers.

But yes, they pulled that bait test a couple times before and never went anywhere with it and that was super shitty. I don’t have any hope that this will revive MvC because it’s not up to the players, it’s up to Marvel to let Capcom make a good game. This collection is still very much appreciated either way.

Does the article say the headline is wrong? Or does it say conspiracy theorists listen to facts because it relies on a handful of willing participants who changed their mind when seeing facts and reports? Because that’s not the crux of the crazy conspiracy theorists.

Try again when the chatbot talked to the likes of Graham Hancock or the hardcore MAGA death cult. Facts don’t matter.

Rand pointed out that many conspiracy theorists actually want to talk about their beliefs. “The problem is that other people don’t want to talk to them about it,”

Just look at this guy who straight up pretends that no one tried to talk to them before.

It does talk about gish gallop at the very end, and claims that the chatbot can keep presenting arguments - but doesn’t actually say that it has worked.

Mais l’alliance avec l’extrême droite, tout va bien ?

Sans avoir eux-mêmes la majorité, ils doivent bien faire des concessions soit à l’extrême droite, soit à la gauche, et on voit bien avec quelle facilité ils font leur choix (au grand dam de leur corps défendant !) et la confiance qu’ils ont que le RN jouera le jeu.

Le désistement en faveur de la gauche pour faire barrage républicain, ça n’aura pas duré.

The article really wants to remind everyone that the hero’s canonical name is Tir, and at first I thought that meant the site was actually using the name. But instead it makes a point to not use that name and call him Hero, so now the article’s insistence just seems sad.

Also for anyone like me looking for the date and confused by it not being in the first line of the article, it’s March 6 2025.

You could argue it’s more like Sekiro but Zelda. Or like Candy Crush but Zelda.