This is one of my gaming needs, so I can help with some I’ve used. They don’t require enough focus to break your focus on your show
Are you saying it is fine if it is buggy or that it won’t be worse than other games?
No, I’m going to say they’re a lot less buggy than people say, and not comparably buggy to most other games I’ve enjoyed in my life. Of course they should strive for improvement. That should go without saying.
But at least they patch their games for many years, Skyrim even got new editions and special edition got their last bug patch last year
100% agreed.
Nice! I might not have to be patient for Starfield at all. I mean, at least after Wheel of Time season 2 anyway.
This is a true statement. But glass houses and stones. Let’s not forget he wrote the infamous “On the Jews and Their Lies”, and started supporting their persecution and outright murder. Many believe that his rhetoric directly caused the antisemitic attitudes of the Nazi Party. The aforementioned book was incredibly popular among Nazis.
And the Lutherans are smart to denounce that book. Catholics could learn from a religion deciding it actually did stupid things and fixing itself.
This is gonna sound crazy, but I’ve basically played every Bethesda game (except redguard) from release, going all the way back to Arena. I know they have bugs, but they’re not really more buggy on release (or later) than a lot of other games I’d played back then. I agree that we should always be expecting better from game companies that are expecting more profit, but if I compare tES games to my other faves… well, let me use examples.
I love Vampire Bloodlines. Famously fan patched for its extreme bugginess after the studio dissolved. Master of Magic? Yup, fan patched. In fact, I think almost every game I put on my top 20 list has fan patched for major bugs that never got fixed in the full lifecycle of the game.
Is it going to be on the PC version of Game Pass? I was going to wait because that’s a lot of money for me not having much time, but I can probably get behind “renting” it by paying for Game Pass.
I just can’t see the reason (there isn’t any) other than needing a conservative out group.
The reason is simple, actually. The Protestant revolution was ostensibly started with Martin Luther advertising that the pope was the antichrist.
Protestantism was basically the practice of declaring Catholicism to be a false Church. Then it evolved and they got more cordial. After 300 years of bloodshed
American Catholics have largely voted Democrat for much of the last century. This flip-flop to voting Republican is relatively recent.
It seems to me to be a bit of a religio-coup. Bishops have some autonomy, and Priests some as well. It’s become increasingly common that both are in opposition to Rome on certain behaviors related to politics, and exactly how strongly they should be pushing people to vote and for what reasons. The dehumanization of Biden (publicly refusing him Eucharist) for his nuanced pro-choice views is in direct contradiction of papal behavior going back at least to the turn of the 20th century. Telling people that in voting, any sin is forgivable except being pro-choice… well, there’s no basis in Canon Law for that attitude.
I live in a very Catholic area, and have a lot of Catholic family. Talking to them, they mention their priests say “you can vote for either party, as long as they’re pro-life”. The Abortion issue is not the only or greatest issue to Rome. It is AN issue, but disagreeing with the Church is generally not going to earn their full enmity unless you are preaching your disagreement. Biden (the target of that local church smear campaign) is absolutely not preaching pro-choice to anyone.
Pope Francis is right to be saying that because American Catholic Leadership has gone WAY astray from what Catholicism allows or mandates of them.
It’s actually somewhat more complicated than that, and relates to the evolution of English words. The word “fornication” I believe was in a state of evolution when KJV was written, originally having a meaning more in-line with “married people who visit prostitutes” (a major issue of the day). It quickly evolved to include all premarital and homosexual relations. I’m not sure how cleanly the timing is, but King James himself had male lovers.
I am of the belief that KJV was not anti-gay as written. Language just caught up to it. It wasn’t a big stretch, as homophobia was a common unofficial position pretty much unbroken between 100AD and 1500AD or so.
That schism happened with Vatican II. After that point, it seems like Popes have regularly been political instead of doing what they knew was right, because they seem to think slight improvement by the congregation is better than alienating the conservative membership. I think the growth Sedevacantism terrifies them more than anything. The group is clearly heretical by every Catholic doctrine, but so popular you will not see any formal declaration that they are in a state of excommunication.
The thing is, we non-Catholics should be rooting the religion on to shed that craziness. Whether you like religion or not, Catholicism is not going anywhere and a progressive Catholic Church is better than a Regressive Catholic Church.
I think deep down he was frustrated that his hands were tied from enacting more progressive policies
Ultimately, I cannot know what was going on in his mind, so we are theorizing. But here’s my counter-theory. He was frustrated because he believed in bipartisanship, in both parties working together for a better country despite neither getting everything it wanted, and he discovered the other side would literally burn the country down for an edge. I think he was an idealist, but his ideal was “one country, one people” instead of this Plymouth/Jamestown contrast we still seem to represent. To that end, he was willing to sacrifice almost anything, and only started playing hardball when he realized after he gave EVERYTHING, the other side smiled and said “so we’re going to vote against that”.
MAYBE passion like mine has driven them away, but let’s be honest, there’s a reason the crazy uncle who listens to Limbaugh or the latest charlatan runs their mouth and everyone else remains quiet. The loud mouth gets their voice heard and to the detriment of the country, that’s influential.
You’re not wrong. I don’t like that we can’t have successful left-loudmouths. I like to say/think it’s because a large part of the Democratic base is interested in truth and facts, but that doesn’t explain the lazy people who are willing to allow for alt-right nonsense but not leftist discussion.
there has been no progress on abortion and Republicans have only continued to cripple LGBTQ rights as well as obstruct tuition forgiveness
I used to think that Roe being overturned would be the last nail, that Red states would spontaneously turn Blue from people who suddenly realized they were in Gilead. I used to actually think they wouldn’t let their best tool to rally the alt-right go away. And I was right that it hurt them now that people are living in the hell of abortion being illegal, but it hasn’t been the wave I expected. I really hope you’re right, but look at Texas. It was supposed to be purple already, and quickly turning Blue in the next 20 years. And that was before Dobbs. I just don’t see that motion yet. I hope to see it soon.
Overall I view Trump supporters as a lost cause, and I literally cannot count more than 2 people I know who regretted their support for Trump since 2015.
Sad, but true. I swear, there’s a mile-long list for why the Republican party should be failing. And they KNOW it. They hate Trump as much as we do. Coming in to 2016, Republicans were internally talking about looking more moderate because they were afraid they’d alienated too many people. Trump wasn’t supposed to have a chance in the Primary. They’re like a zombie party. Things that would destroy almost any other party in the world are reinvigorating them. Non-stop sex scandals? MORE VOTES.
I agree with quite a few of your points, but not all of them. The biggest disagreement we have is on the nature of Obama.
In his political career, he was always a conservative/moderate. The fact that he seemed to hide his conservativeness in his campaigning suggests he knew progressives might be a fair draw and he needed their vote. Maybe he’s a lifestyle liar, but I wouldn’t bet on it.
As for Trump voters. Yeah. Two counterpoints.
Generally there are a lot of the middle-ground “enlightened centrist,” fence-sitters who have yet to fully commit to a side. These are the people we must reach out to.
1000% agree. But it’s not easy. I look at some of my family members in their formative voting years (19-22). They are uninterested in the left… why? Because they have family who won’t shut up about how bad Trump is. I kid you not. They have analyzed enough to realize it’s true, but then found themselves just not caring to vote because some people are just so damn passionate. Like passion is a bad thing. And it’s not just one or two people. The attitude seems fairly common, and reiterates the “desensitize” thing. The real problem could well be that after this influx of gen y upping the vote out of fear of Trump, we’re going to watch the voting rate plummet again… and we all know what happens when not enough people vote.
That’s ok. You could still win after that message. It’s just more fun to do so
While retaining socialism as a long-term goal, social democracy is distinguished from some modern forms of democratic socialism for seeking to humanize capitalism and create the conditions for it to lead to greater democratic, egalitarian, and solidaristic outcomes… It has been described as the most common form of Western or modern socialism,[6] as well as the reformist wing of democratic socialism. ( ref )
Social democracy is, by definition, geared towards socialism while still acting within capitalism to better society by pushing for direct action against inequality. The way a lot of socdems see it, the difference between them and demsocs is that demsocs tend to be neutral (or even negative) on steps that better overall quality-of-life that involve working within the capital system. For example, a socdem would embrace public option, or growing medicare as a good thing in the US because it’s better than what we have. A demsoc **might ** not because it is not actually taking a concrete step towards nationalizing healthcare.
Categorizing is hard because different people think different things of different terms, but it is unfair to categorically call socdems “liberal” in the “free enterprise” sense.
The political definition of liberal generally involves free enterprise. Social Democrats are generally trying to phase out free enterprise towards higher regulation and public good. Social Democrats seek to move society towards socialism nonviolently. That is not really a “liberal” thing by the version of that term generally used by Marxists.
Most of the people who voted for Trump knew what he was for and agreed with his platform. That platform was far-right
I can’t speak for everyone. But I knew quite a few Trump voters who clearly did not understand the for-right platform. They thought they voted:
This, to me, is similar to a lot of the folks voting for Obama thinking he was actually progressive despite openly being conservative.
In the end, I don’t find much difference between those so incredibly gullible (useful idiots?) enough to fall for the shallow fox news propaganda of far-right extremism
There is a drastic difference between evil people and stupid people, and knowing that is both important for keeping your sanity in a country that elected him, but also politically important for knowing that we’re not just a few votes away from the majority of Americans wanting a fascism.
both lead to the same dangerous logical conclusion
This is true, and why it’s both important that we educate people, and that we work towards a country where campaigns of lies are either illegal or at least made ineffective. The Democrats ran fairly hard on “everything Trump said is a lie” and were able to prove it, and that wasn’t enough.
Besides, I think every far-right extremist at their core is ignorant in themselves.
Sure, but not every fool is a racist. Most of them are “centirsts” or merely uninterested in politics and just want to go on with their lives.
Most of the time, tankies tell me that I’m automatically a Liberal (the bad version of the word) if I’m a Social Democrat.
Also fair enough. I acknowledge that the gun question is an incredibly complicated and nuanced one, and I think both extreme sides of it tend to oversimplify it in their own way. I’m definitely with you on that part.
I’ve got a few disagreements on this. I really swore I wouldn’t get into a 2A argument here.
Properly executed defensive carry does not add much volatility
Allegedly. We just don’t have enough school examples to know if that’s really the case.
Making the primary response an assault team that needs to enter and clear the building adds complexity and volatility
Except that (in non-dystopian situations) those assault teams will have dramatically more training. You are correct that breaching is more dangerous. That’s why I pitched a security team stationed inside schools. I don’t agree that, from a tactical point of view, you want that many disparate defenders who are not even part-time trained for that role.
Gun control always results in a ban
There are hundreds of countries that prove this wrong. A supermajority of countries in the world have gun control, and a near unanimity of those countries do not have absolute gun bans. I’m sure you can find a definition for the term “gun ban” where that’s the case (say, if any weapon is banned for any reason, you call it a gun ban), but there seems to be no evidence of a real slippery slope between gun control and gun bans.
The US thankfully has it built into the Constitution as the fundamental right that it is
This is also strictly incorrect, or at least incredibly nuanced. The 2nd Amendment does not add it as a fundamental right at all (Barron v. Baltimore, or merely the laws passed/defended by the very same people who penned and signed the Constitution). The 14th Amendment does add it as a fundamental right based around the Equal Rights clause (specifically, regarding Southern States banning guns from Black Americans and not White Americans). Despite SCOTUS being extremely creative (good and bad) with the 14th Amendment the last 40-50 years in general, there are still teeth to some gun control laws for that very reason. Prejudicial gun control is unconstitutional, but (on strict interpretation, not on how a future SCOTUS would rule) gun control with a defensible reason is not. Non-gun weapons
Your reply deserves more time than I have, I’m sorry. I am really grateful for this type of conversation where nobody reduces to name-calling. It’s refreshing after reddit.
But I do want to point to 1 thing. "True I can only theorize, though Obama did proclaim himself to be a progressive through the 2008 campaign with progressives naturally drawn to him as well. " I don’t think that’s actually true.
I used google historical search a couple years back to look at what Obama ACTUALLY campaigned as and proclaimed. Surprisingly, he wasn’t saying a ton of progressive things. He campaigned heavily on words that could be taken multiple ways, but on the issues he seemed fairly conservative. When I pulled up even slightly over, lots of news articles from unbiased (or left-biased) sources referring him to a Party Moderate.
I think the wool was pulled over our eyes, and I go back and forth between thinking he did it, thinking his campaign staff did it, and between thinking our optimism did it.
I didn’t follow it as closely as I’d like to. Didn’t it go like Primaries usually do, with the bottom-polling candidate trying to step out and redirect their votes towards their favorite… with a lather-rinse-repeat? The final vote was apparently down to 4 candidates. And Trump got more votes than the other 3 combined, nearly 50% of the Primary Votes. RCV doesn’t beat him basically having a majority vote among the field.