Turkish delights, as I know them, are basically little sugar bombs, so they shouldn’t need any other preservatives to have a very long shelf life.

I’ve never had any awful tasting ones, so I can only guess how they might be screwed up. My guess would be that some overly greedy multinational(s) is (are) using corn syrup instead of sucrose.

They had an official “one-drop rule”, so no need for a chart I guess. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-drop_rule

Claims that “lib” is not a slur.

Is shown with a textbook definition that “lib” is indeed a slur in how it was used.

Resorts to insults.

Uses “lib” as a slur.

I feel like we’re making progress here.

I feel for you.

“A pejorative word, phrase, slur, or derogatory term is a word or grammatical form expressing a negative or disrespectful connotation, a low opinion, or a lack of respect toward someone or something.[1] It is also used to express criticism, hostility, or disregard.”

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pejorative

So yes, it’s a slur.

Deragotory language, generalization & stigmatization. It is hate speech against all liberal minded people, there is nothing kind or reasonable about it.

Someone else already commented how tankies got their name.

Tankies in the comments can generally be recognized by:

• Anything that a liberal democratic country does is bad.
• Authoritarian regimes such as China, Venezuela, Russia, North-Korea, … are somehow the good guys, no matter how well documented their transgressions against human rights are. Tankies defend Russia’s invasion of Ukraine for example.
• Because tankies want to present some atrocious regimes and people as the good guys, they have to twist the truth a lot. So they constantly lie and misrepresent/omit facts to push their false narrative.
• Since they’re not interested in an actual discussion or non tankie viewpoints, they employ non-constructive discussion techniques to score points and “win” arguments. And this last bullet point is mostly why everyone else hates them.

There’s 7 featured posts, which I assume are stickies made by the moderators. The 3rd post after that, so the 3rd actual popular post, is “fucking libs are still making excuses in the comments”. Such kindness and reason …

It definitely is unfortunately. Source: not an American.

That system of vector maps is in popular use atleast since the 1970s, so when Google maps started, they could just collect existing gis (geographic information systems) maps. I wasn’t born yet, but I expect that countries/companies started digitizing their old maps in the 1970s and 1980s and that paper prints after that were based on those digital versions. And countries without good maps to start from (too large/remote/administratively weak), probably started their digital mapping projects based on aerial photos. And when Papua New Guinea finally starts with a digital mapping project, they can start straight away from satellite photos :)

Still better than old school linear tv, where you paid to watch things being constantly interrupted by paid commercials.

And I’m not saying that you are. I tried to show with a parable that they do not need to see their machine’s actions to know that some of it’s actions are illegal. That’s what we were disagreeing on: that they know.

I made an automaton. I set the parameters in such a way that there is a large variability of actions that my automaton can take. My parameters do not pre-empt my automaton from taking certain illegal actions. I set my automaton loose. After some time it turns out that my automaton has taken an illegal action against a specific person. Did I know that my automaton was going to commit a illegal action against that specific person? No, I did not. Did I know that my automaton was sooner or later going to commit certain illegal actions? Yes I did, because those actions are within the parameters of the automaton. I know my automaton is capable of doing illegal actions and given enough incidences there is an absolute certainty that it will do those illegal actions. I do not need to interact with my automaton in any way to know that some of it’s actions will be illegal.

You can’t create an automated machine, let it run loose without supervision and then claim to not be responsible for what the machine does.

Maybe just maybe this was the very first instance of their ai malfunctioning (which I don’t believe for a second), in which case the correct response of Brandshield would have been to announce that they would temporarily suspend the activities of this particular program & promise to implement improvements so that it would not happen again. Brandshield has done neither of these, which tells me that it’s not the first time and also that Brandshield has no intention of preventing it from happening again in the future.

If it had been phishing, then going to the registrar would have been the right call, because you want to take that down asap. But according to itch.io it wasn’t, instead it was a a real fansite that was linking to the real website of funko’s game (according to itch.io). Something which most media companies allow since it’s basically free publicity and goodwill, but if they did want it taken down for copyright reasons, then a DMCA takedown request send to itch.io would have been the correct first action.

In the response statement by Brandshield, Brandshield does not deny having send a takedown request for phishing to the registrar (confirming that they did), nor do they dispute itch.io’s statement that it wasn’t a phishing site (confirming that they know that it wasn’t), instead they only speak about “infringement”.

So now we know that Brandshield is knowingly making false accusations that have potentially serious consequences for their victims. And it’s not going to be the first time that they’ve done this, but even this high publicity case will probably not have any legal consequences for brandshield, so it looks like they will continue getting away with it. Unfortunately they’re not alone, it often seems like the entire DMCA industry is rotten.

Why ask the registrar to take down a subdomain of a website?

Those subdomains are not managed or controlled by the registrar, so all the registrar can do is either take down the entire domain or ask their client to take down the subdomain. In this case they asked their client, who took down the subdomain, after which the registrar took down the domain anyhow :D

For a single isolated offence, Brandshield’s first action should have been to report the copyright infringement to itch.io and ask for a takedown of that content, instead they went directly to the registrar and falsely claimed that itch.io was a fraud & phishing site. I suspect that they falsely claim that it’s about phishing and fraud, because otherwise registrars will not take down the site unless there is systematic copyright infringement (like a torrent site). And I suspect that brandshield goes directly to the registrar with their complaint, since that is easier to automate than finding the right contact info on a website.

So my take is that: The registrar was in the wrong for taking down the domain after itch.io removed the problematic subdomain. Brandshield is scum. And Funko is in the wrong for using brandshield.

No real need for further answers from itch.io, nothing new has come to light.

Edit: while under the shower I realized that Brandshield’s posts do contain some kind of news: Brandshield does not deny having used fraud & phishing as reason for the takedown request, thereby confirming that they did. Before we just had itch.io’s retelling of the events, which might have been a misrepresentation by itch.io or due to a cock-up by the registrar, but because of the lack of denial by brandshield, we now have confirmation that it did happen like itch.io said.

Thanks for the tip, I’ll give it a try the next time that the algorithm goes nuts.

I had been using YouTube for years without being presented rightwing propaganda in my suggestions. I mostly just watched strategy gaming, history, technology channels and some peculiar travelling blogs. And my suggested was just mostly those things.

Then one day I used my YouTube account to cast kid shows for my niece for the first time. After that I was suggested more kid shows which didn’t interest me personally, but I also started getting suggested cat videos, which I obviously clicked. And the week after that half my suggested feed was rightwing misogynist/racist/culture war misinformation, and it took a lot of “do not recommend channel” to clean it up again.

So now I believe that there is a concerted effort by some malicious actors to train Google’s algorithm to assume that if someone is interested in cat videos, that they would then also be open to becoming a misogynist racist prick.

Maybe it’s because it was in the same language group as those others that polish got singled out. People who speak an Indo European language will expect to be lost when first trying to learn a language outside of the group, but might not expect to be so confuddled from a related language. Expectations basically.

French people do eat apple beignets, which are basically fried apples.

If you’ve never had one before, apple beignets are easy to make and delicious, plenty of recipes around.