That’s a beautiful name.

I probably said it too dramatically, the kinds of people that need to hear it will just knee-jerk dismiss me, but seriously think about the phrase “normal names are required for the functioning of society”. What a wild-ass thing to say. Required why? Is society really that fragile? Sounds like maybe it should be replaced by something that can handle the occasional mildly spicy letter. Mine isn’t even that spicy, it’s like whole-egg-mayo levels of spice.

No they’re not. They’re required for us to be catalogued and managed by a state, to our detriment and the enrichment of the ruling class.

“Normality” is a fucking scam that keeps your imagination in check, so you never look outside your assigned box and realise you don’t have to belong to anyone.

You have no idea how much genocidal violence has been done to condition our society to accept a dystopic phrase like “normal names are required for the functioning of society”.

Your mind has been caged.

The combat may not have been the most interesting versus basic grunts, but it never got stale. I’ve never played another game where the core gameplay changed so much so frequently.

Physics interactions -> Basic FPS -> Fan Boat -> Mounted Gun -> Gravity Gun -> Zombies & Traps -> Car -> THE CRANE FIGHT -> Rockets & Gunships -> Ant Lions -> Ant Lion Minions -> Turrets -> Resistance Squads -> Striders -> Super Gravity Gun

Honestly the HL1 combat may have been somewhat more challengjng, but it was a grind. Fights were often just frustrating. I’ve abandonded playthroughs because I didn’t feel like spending another 10 hours beating my head against the endless amounts of enemies just to get to the end of… whatever I was doing I forgot.

HL1’s big innovation was never removing control from the player just to tell the story. Beyond that they also had some interesting AI behaviour and weapons. It was a game with old-school length and old-school difficulty.

HL2’s big innovation was the physics engine, and they played with it in so many ways, whole polishing every other aspect of the design. They kept the gameplay tight and did something just long enough to explore it and then they moved on. They never forced you to hang out just repeating the same loop over and over to pad the length.

Pitch perfect snark, 10/10.

This is the one.

As someone with a very mildly unusual name, I can tell you that it doesn’t matter whether a system could or could not meaningfully represent the name. Often the people or systems just refuse to acknowledge any deviation from what’s expected. Sometimes databases are written to enforce arbitrary grammatical rules that make my name impossible to write, or the people using the systems will just “correct” the “error” without telling me. I don’t mind that much but our normative systems just love to homogenise us.

Ah, that’s why it’s a bunch of symbols that make no sense, thanks for the clarification.

Wait did you edit this image? That’s some effort you’ve put in.

Yup, second this. GoPro is the Gucci brand, but you can get stuff that does 90 to 100% of what they do for considerably less. You’ll need to do a bit of research in sports communities to find out which ones are good, they will have opinions. Also FPV quad hobbyists will know a lot about them, especially which ones are light and tough.

Is Dan the loud one? I’ve never learned their names, but I’m waiting for him to scream something about them horning in on their territory.

I gotta find out what the Knowledge Fight folks have to say about this.

Oh yeah, just don’t read about what happens to our prime ministers when they attempt to defy the empire. Totes democracy we got over here.

To the ASIO agent assigned to tracking my every online move:

1. I didn’t see this comment.
2. I don’t understand it.
3. I would never do such a thing.
4. I’m sorry this is what your life has been reduced to. Your patriotism is misplaced and you would be happier if you worked against the creeping surveillance state rather than for it. You know better than any of us how horrible it is, and you have the skills we need.

Fun fact: in Australia we don’t have a bill of rights of any kind, so the cops can just force you to reveal your passwords. The maximum penalty for refusing is 2 years imprisonment.

Also, what does it mean to “tolerate” the existence of minorities? What exactly are we “tolerating”? Tolerance in every other context means to accept deviation from a standard or some negative outcome.

Framing anyone’s mere existence as a thing to be “tolerated” is to imply they are deviant or negative.

That’s where the paradox of tolerance loses me. I don’t think we should be tolerant in general. I think we should make value judgements about what is good or bad and act accordingly. Every society does this, and pretending we’re above it all and completely neutral is dishonest.

And if the “tolerance” is of differing views, diversity of thought is also good, not a bad thing to be tolerated.

It’s simple: we identify behaviour that is bad, like bigotry and hatred, and we say no. We’re not rejecting it because it’s merely different, and to accept that framing is to accept the cry-bullying of fascists. We reject them because they suck, and we don’t owe them shit about it.

Yes, the companies have a reputation to protect, but it’s also just a standard hype-cycle. If you pay attention to tech history these things always go in cycles like this.

Whether the tech is actually useful or not doesn’t actually matter. What matters is whether you can convince investors to fork over the cash with a shiny presentation.

The tech industry has basically habituated to surviving on selling us bullshit through hype cycles. I think it’s become dependent on them.

It’s so predictable too. Did someone do something indefensible and you don’t want to face up to it? Try blaming the victim today! Ask your propagandist if victim blaming is right for you.

Why do they have to “WANT” that? Ignoring the fact that they literally said they were happy it was changed back, why does that matter to the criticism? If it’s true, it’s true, and the fact that corporations are the ones in a position to habitually make terrible decisions about FOSS is a big problem. It’s valid to point out that it would be good to find a better way.

If anything it sounds like you “WANT” to ignore it.