It’s/It

  • 101 Posts
  • 191 Comments
Joined 2 years ago
Cake day: June 20th, 2023
  • arotrios@lemmy.worldtoLuigi Mangione@lemmy.world•Luigi Mangione fixed 25% of the UI bugs in Civ VIEnglish
    29·
    4 hours ago

    This actually makes an incredible amount of sense. Anyone who has played any of the Civs for long enough knows that taking out the right unit at the right time can change the entire face of the map. Imagine having that kind of tactical gameplay drilled into your head every day for 8-10 hours a day as a developer.

    At some point, the lines between the game, the job, and real life must have become blurred. Civ is a virtual abstraction of real life. The healthcare industry is a bureaucratic one, twisted from being a service that cares for people to one that only keeps you alive as long as you can pay.

    The goal in every video game is to kill the boss. The sad fallacy of this approach to political action is that there’s always another boss waiting in line to take his place, and the machinery of evil barely blinks an eye at the average murderous vigilante. If Luigi hadn’t have been caught, and just disappeared into the night, we wouldn’t be talking about him now - the murder would have faded from our awareness with the news cycle’s constant obsession over Trump.

    Instead, the police did the worst thing they could have done.

    They caught him.

    And this meant that the faceless masked murderer became a cute rich Italian guy who had a fire in his eyes and the name of one of the most beloved video game characters of all time. By dragging him out in chains in a performative perp-walk, the cops were demonstrating their loyalty to the oligarchy who run the country (and the Healthcare chuds are a big part of that machine), and at the same time, managed to make him into a living martyr.

    Because everyone, everywhere, who has ever played a Super Mario Brothers game in their life, has been Luigi at one time or another.

    Now there’s no chance at even a semblance of a fair trial, and they’ve guaranteed that the mere mention of his name will draw eyeballs and has the potential to start a riot, or inspire more gunmen.

    All because of video games…

    Guess they weren’t a waste of time after all, Mom…

  • arotrios@lemmy.worldtopolitics @lemmy.world•Trump and his allies in Congress are targeting the financial, digital and legal machinery that powers the Democratic Party and much of the progressive political world.English
    20·
    22 hours ago

    Historical context - Germany, March 5, 1933:

    On March 5, 1933, the government held an election for control of the Reichstag. The Nazis won 288 seats (43.9% of the vote). The Communists won 81 seats (12.3%), even though their representatives were unable to claim those seats—if they appeared in public, they faced immediate arrest. Other opposition parties also won significant numbers of seats. The Social Democrats captured 119 seats (18.3%), and the Catholic Center Party won 73 seats (11.2%). Together, the Communist, Social Democratic, and Catholic Center Parties won nearly as many seats as the Nazis. But their members distrusted one another almost as much as they feared the Nazis.

    As a result, these parties were unable to mount a unified opposition to the Nazi Party.

    Still under Nazi control, the Reichstag passed a new law on March 21, 1933, that made it a crime to speak out against the new government or criticize its leaders. Known as the Malicious Practices Act, the law made even the smallest expression of dissent a crime. Those who were accused of “gossiping” or “making fun” of government officials could be arrested and sent to prison or a concentration camp.

    Then, on March 24, 1933, the Reichstag passed what became known as the Enabling Act by a vote of 141 to 94. It “enabled” the chancellor of Germany to punish anyone he considered an “enemy of the state.” The act allowed “laws passed by the government” to override the constitution. Only the 94 Social Democrats voted against the law. Most of the other deputies who opposed it were in hiding, in prison, or in exile.

    That same day, Nazi leader Heinrich Himmler, then police commissioner for the city of Munich, held a news conference to announce the opening of the first concentration camp near Dachau, Germany. According to Himmler, the camp would have the capacity to hold 5,000 people, including Communist Party members and Social Democrats “who threaten the security of the state.” Himmler continued, according to a newspaper report:

    Throughout the spring and early summer of 1933, the Nazis used the new laws to frighten and intimidate Germans. By May, they forced all trade labor unions to dissolve. Instead, workers could only belong to a Nazi-approved union called the German Labor Front.

  • arotrios@lemmy.worldtoGames@lemmy.world•PC gamers spend 92% of their time on older games, oh and there are apparently 908 million of us nowEnglish
    97·
    2 days ago

    Honestly, most new games just fucking suck. They’re too expensive, often don’t run properly at launch even on excellent hardware, and those that don’t have micro-transactions built-in require you to purchase DLC to get the whole game.

    On the other hand, the older titles almost always run well on my machine, have a ton of community DLC, and in general are just designed better because they were built to bring the player as much fun as possible, not to extract as much money as possible.

    Plus, the quality content generated from 2005 - 2015 represents some of the best ever, and can provide hundreds of hours of enjoyment before you even get into the 2010s. Why waste money on something that may not work, and that I likely won’t enjoy as much as the games I bought 10 years ago?

    It’s why I usually wait at least a year after release to consider whether or not I’m going to buy a title.