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Cake day: June 15th, 2023

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  • Blame the Democratic Party for not winning their vote in “the most important election of our lifetimes” and instead trying to appeal to the center right.

    To sort of reiterate the point in my original comment, let me ask you two questions. You don’t have to give me the answers, but at least ponder them internally:

    1. What’s your opinion on people who voted for Trump despite everything he’s done, and try to blame all their problems on immigrants and leftists?

    2. Why do you refuse to hold the Dems accountable for their campaign and the policies they run on, and keep trying to throw the blame on other people?



  • So fucking predictable.

    Remember when Biden stepped down? Do you remember how unpopular he was and the massive wave of hope and support for Kamala that showed itself? Well, what the fuck did you think was gonna happen when Kamala glued herself to Biden, and tried to appeal to center right voters? They refuse to make compromises with the left, try to appeal to the center-right, and then blame the left for not voting for them; classic center/lib playbook, the same thing happens in Portugal, same thing happened in 2016 USA elections.

    I thought that Democrats would win DESPITE the absolute dog shit campaign, given everything about Trump, but it was still an absolute dog shit campaign by people who claimed this was the most important election of people’s lives, but then dug their hills in ideologically and refused to compromise with people on their left.

    If the situation wasn’t so dire, it would be hilarious to see the double think by Dem voters in this thread:

    • “How can Rep voters not hold Trump accountable despite everything he’s done!”

    • “It’s not the Dems fault that they lost, despite trying to appeal to the center-right instead of the left; it’s never their fault! It’s the leftists fault for not voting Dem! Kamala did nothing wrong!”


  • This will be my last comment because I don’t want to keep bothering you, especially because I know I write too much, but feel to reply and I will read it.


    most of the Pacific Ocean garbage patch is commercial fishing nets (just one example)

    But who eats the fish? It’s not the companies. The companies are just enablers. I’m now not sure if you read it, so I refer you back to the last part of my comment (last 2 paragraphs).

    I personally live in a state where taxes on the individual are the answer to every problem and it only makes it even harder for people to survive? Not great.

    It seems you don’t realize it, but you’re agreeing with what I’m saying. Studies/polls have shown the majority of people would be in favour of a carbon tax. But as you said, high prices/taxes don’t really help and can make life terrible for the average person. Yet, that would be the result of a carbon tax. But people don’t think about that; people just think about how the world is going to shit, and someone should do something and when they hear “carbon tax” they think “great!”, because they think it’s a way to keep their lifestyle and comforts and don’t realize it would necessitate a life change anyway. The question is whether you do the change now by reducing your consumption, or wait until you’re forced to do it due to regulation and prices hikes you can’t afford.

    I do truly believe that everyone is doing their best with the tools that they are given, and I cannot discount their efforts. It is not my place to talk shit idk.

    I really don’t want to be rude or mean, but I have no other way to put this: if you really think that, you really are naive and living in a bubble. Which I guess isn’t surprising if you do live off grid and have enough room to grow your own food and you can compost all your waste, while also being on the Fediverse and especially from beehaw (very leftist leaning and environmentally aware places); but take it from someone living in a very large city and who frequents very diverse online places: that’s not true.

    Just from the most environmentally “aware” people I personally know: a lot don’t bother recycling, or didn’t until very recently; they don’t think twice about single use plastics; most of them have meat as the stable of their diet, especially red meat; one of them insists on drinking bottled water despite have clean tap water, and a lot of the others buy quite a bit of plastic soda bottles. Oh, and something about my neighbours: some of them throw plastic take out packages out of their windows and into the street.

    And also, finally, if what you say is true, then environmental parties would currently be in government in most places; after all a vote is tool everyone has and it costs nothing. But that’s not the case. In my country, the two most environmentally aware parties are currently the 2 smallest parties in the parliament; the second biggest one is a far right party; the third party are somewhere between liberals and right wing libertarians who have said there is no climate emergency; the leading party is a liberal party who talks about the environment, but doesn’t actually do shit about it. And that’s with a 60 to 70% voter turnout.

    Do you really expect me to believe that “everyone is doing their best with the tools that they are given”?

    I’m from Portugal btw, you can see here how many tons of CO2 per capita we were responsible for emitting (from production and consumption in 2018 and 2016 respectively). We’re not even top 50 in either list; USA is 17th and 7th, for reference.


  • That’s a pretty absurd generalization. I live off grid and get my power from solar, food from my garden and foraging. I compost all of my waste, consume as consciously as I can possibly achieve as an average individual, and I refuse to accept that this is some regular person’s fault.

    Then why do you do all that? You are contradicting yourself. Clearly you believe the average person has an impact, which is what I and others are saying. That doesn’t mean it’s all the average person’s fault, or that there aren’t powerful people leveraging that power to try to keep this system up. But “the system” isn’t something magical or a law of the universe; “the system” is people and their choices.

    Almost everyone is just trying their best, save for a small number of incredibly rich people+the entities they run ruining everything.

    Come on, you know that’s not true. Just go outside and talk to the average person, or even go on a more popular and less closed off social network.

    I’m not saying life is easy right now, but most people could do a lot more than they do. Most people eat more red meat than is even healthy for them, never mind the environment, and never mind other meats or animal products in general. Most people will buy bottled water (and other beverages) even when they have access to clean tap water (and I’m not saying everybody does have access to it). Most people will make excuses to use a car, no matter how good the public transport is, or even if they could use a bicycle. Most people will still choose to use plastic bags for groceries instead of reusable ones, at least until a store stops supplying plastic bags.

    To expand a bit more on this and not have to do much typing, I’ll just a leave a couple of comments from else where on this thread; the first one is mine and the second is from another user:


    Though experiment:

    Tomorrow is election day in your country. The stout environmentalists win control of the government and proceed to make the following changes:

    • Carbon tax, which increases the price of gas, which itself results in an increase in shipping anything. It also directly raises the price of anything that produces carbon in its manufacture process, such as anything made of plastic.

    • An end to meat subsidies - maybe even a tax on it - and an increase to subsidizing other types of farming.

    • A ban on single use plastics.

    • And anything else you think might be necessary.

    Now the questions: How long until they get kicked out? How long until the protests and riots? How long until a new government undoes it all?

    I’m assuming you’re not naive and you don’t live in a bubble. You should know the majority of people will not be fans of any of that; and with the way it usually goes and the pendulum swings, the government that follows it will be a far right one.


    what would happen if everyone turned around and said ‘you know what, fuck companies that sell drinks in bottles i’m never going to be without my refillable bottle’ how long would coca-cola keep producing 100 billion plastic bottles a year? what would they do with them?

    But if James Quincey said ‘fuck it, I’m not producing plastic bottles anymore they’re bad for the planet’ but 8 billion people said ‘oh ok, well we’re still going to regularly buy drinks in plastic bottles’ the numbers of plastic bottles being made would dip slightly but only while Ramon Laguarta rushed to spend the flood of money now coming in to scale up production at pepsi co.


  • I personally don’t think the mechanics work that well or are very well thought out. This mainly due to 4 factors which, all together, just make the romances seem really forced, as well as annoying and unbearable sometimes. With maybe 1 exception that I know of out of the 9 companions:

    • All companions are bisexual

    • All companions are attracted to the player

    • When attracted to the player they will all actively make a move on the player, instead of waiting for the player to chose to hit on one of them

    • The dialogue trees are way too heavy on romance, to the point that sometimes the only friendly options seem way too intimate and even flirty.

    Just 2 of those would be fine, maybe 3, but 4 really pushes it.

    Part of what I mean by friendly options seeming way too intimate, is that instead of the game giving you friendly and obviously romantic options, it often seems to compress all of that into just one option (or just one way that the character acts) which skirts the line between friendly and flirty so as to try and retain plausible deniability (“I’m not interested in that character”) while still giving you a way to role-play the romance (“That was clearly flirting/an intimate romantic moment”).

    Don’t even get me started on Gale. His affinity was over 80 before Act I was over, and at one point I had four dialogue options out of which only one didn’t seem flirty (the one I chose). Then, after he said we were friends, I had three choices “I want to be more than friends / We’re not friends / That depends, what do you like about me?”. Out of those, the third one is the one I went with, but even that seems a bit flirty to me. Then later he says he needs to talk to me “urgently”, so my character goes to him, sits quite close to him in a way I would consider intimate and more than friendly, and he then professes his love for me.

    Other than Gale: Shadowheart was quite easy to romance; Lae’zel said she liked my sweat or something; Wyll I’ve definitely had more-than-friendly conversations with; Astarion, simply due to his personality, has been hitting on the entire time despite me barely using him*. Halsin I don’t use, Minthara is FUBAR, and I think Jaheira cannot be romanced. Karlach might be the only one I’ve used that hasn’t hit on me yet.

    *And I wouldn’t even mind Astarian’s personality if it wasn’t for everything else.


  • It’s not shifting blame, it’s pointing out they do not exist in isolation. You can put blame on the companies and still recognize that most people make no effort to avoid them, even when they have a choice.

    I’ll add on what someone said further above:


    what would happen if everyone turned around and said ‘you know what, fuck companies that sell drinks in bottles i’m never going to be without my refillable bottle’ how long would coca-cola keep producing 100 billion plastic bottles a year? what would they do with them?

    But if James Quincey said ‘fuck it, I’m not producing plastic bottles anymore they’re bad for the planet’ but 8 billion people said ‘oh ok, well we’re still going to regularly buy drinks in plastic bottles’ the numbers of plastic bottles being made would dip slightly but only while Ramon Laguarta rushed to spend the flood of money now coming in to scale up production at pepsi co.



  • Like others have said, there’s no reason to play in order, but to be more specific:

    • If you ask someone what their favourite FF is, 90% of people will answer something between 6 and 10, so you should probably start with one in that range.

    • 1 is probably not worth playing at all, it hardly even has a story and is very simple.

    • 2 is better, but I would say 3 is where it really starts to get good.

    • 4 and 5 are also very liked and popular.

    • 12 doesn’t have the best story, but it’s good and it has a lot of people’s favourite combat system.

    • 13 isn’t bad, but a lot of people didn’t enjoy it. I hardly hear people talk about it nowadays, but maybe that’s just me.

    • 15 is probably more liked than 13 but it also gets a lot of criticism. It’s quite modern, though, so it’s probably one of the easiest to get into for most people.

    • 11 and 14 are MMOs. If you like MMOs, you should probably choose 14 because 11 is quite old and doesn’t have a lot of players.


    EDIT: Forgot to mention 16 because it just came out, but from what I hear a lot of people like it, so it may be a good entry point, although it’s console exclusive.


  • I’m copy pasting something because it’s easier than writing it all again:


    Though experiment:

    Tomorrow is election day in your country. The stout environmentalists win control of the government and proceed to make the following changes:

    • Carbon tax, which increases the price of gas, which itself results in an increase in shipping anything. It also directly raises the price of anything that produces carbon in its manufacture process, such as anything made of plastic.

    • An end to meat subsidies - maybe even a tax on it - and an increase to subsidizing other types of farming.

    • A ban on single use plastics.

    • And anything else you think might be necessary.

    Now the questions: How long until they get kicked out? How long until the protests and riots? How long until a new government undoes it all?

    I’m assuming you’re not naive and you don’t live in a bubble. You should know the majority of people will not be fans of any of that; and with the way it usually goes and the pendulum swings, the government that follows it will be a far right one.


    Most people can definitely afford to eat less meat and consume less in general, even if they can’t afford to buy the most environmentally friendly things. And if they can’t even afford that, they won’t be able to afford the environmental policies either; you would need much deeper change than you would get by voting for a major political party.



  • And then others will rise to take their place. If the demand is there, someone will try to meet it. All long as the vast majority of people are not willing to make changes in their own life, then everything else is pointless, and it will all fail.

    EDIT: Stealing another comment to add to this:


    what would happen if everyone turned around and said ‘you know what, fuck companies that sell drinks in bottles i’m never going to be without my refillable bottle’ how long would coca-cola keep producing 100 billion plastic bottles a year? what would they do with them?

    But if James Quincey said ‘fuck it, I’m not producing plastic bottles anymore they’re bad for the planet’ but 8 billion people said ‘oh ok, well we’re still going to regularly buy drinks in plastic bottles’ the numbers of plastic bottles being made would dip slightly but only while Ramon Laguarta rushed to spend the flood of money now coming in to scale up production at pepsi co.


  • I did make the changes personally.

    Then congratulations! You are part of a different kind of 1%, and you perfectly understand what the other user is saying and are just arguing for the sake of arguing.

    The reality is, most people don’t want to make any changes. You can’t change the system if the people themselves are not opening to change.

    Though experiment:

    Tomorrow is election day in your country. The stout environmentalists win control of the government and proceed to make the following changes:

    • Carbon tax, which increases the price of gas, which itself results in an increase in shipping anything. It also directly raises the price of anything that produces carbon in its manufacture process, such as anything made of plastic.

    • An end to meat subsidies - maybe even a tax on it - and an increase to subsidizing other types of farming.

    • A ban on single use plastics.

    • And anything else you think might be necessary.

    Now the questions: How long until they get kicked out? How long until the protests and riots? How long until a new government undoes it all?

    I’m assuming you’re not naive and you don’t live in a bubble. You should know the majority of people will not be fans of any of that; and with the way it usually goes and the pendulum swings, the government that follows it will be a far right one.