Another of the many things the current US shares with Ancien Régime France - then and there too, the richest paid little to nothing in taxes, even as the government served their interests almost exclusively.

In a somewhat metaphorical but nonetheless very real sense - most politics is effectively snake oil.

There’s a set of people who exhibit a particular combination of mental illness and natural charisma, such that they feel an irrational urge to impose their wills on others, a lack of the necessary empathy to recognize the harm they do and the personal appeal necessary to convince others to let them do it.

There’s another set of people who feel an irrational sense of helplessness - who want to turn control of their lives and their decisions over to others, so they can just go along with a preordained set of values and beliefs and choices rather expending effort on, and taking the risk of, making their own.

And just as in any more standard “snake oil” dynamic, the first group, exclusively for its own benefit, preys upon the weakness and hope of the second. Just as in any other such dynamic, the people of the first group make promises they have no intention of keeping ultimately just so that they can benefit, and the people of the second group continue, irratiomally, to believe those promises, even as all of the available evidence demonstrates that the promises are empty.

Candidates for public office should be required to undergo a mental health assessment as part of the process of getting on the ballot, and those who score beyond (above or below, as may be relevant) particular thresholds are barred from seeking office.

I sincerely believe that there’s no single thing we could do that would provide more benefit to the world than to get sociopaths and narcissists and megalomaniacs out of positions of power. Each and every one of the most notable and contentious politicians in the world today is, if you just take a step back and look at them honestly, blatantly profoundly mentally ill. Enough is enough.

That just says to me that no near future Monster Hunter game is going to be worth playing, since that focus just means that gameplay and story are going to be sacrificed in favor of graphics and gimmicks.

How is anybody even surprised by this?

This is exactly the sort of thing Beth has been moving towards ever since their first ham-handed attempt to monetize mods deservedly blew up in their faces.

They didn’t give up on the idea - they just shifted to a strategy of doing it incrementally.

And this is just the latest step in that ongoing process.

Think about how bad it’s (very deliberately) going to be by the time TES 6 finally comes out…

I think it started in earnest the day of his AMA, whenever that was.

It actually started long before that. Fuck U Spez was already a meme when all of the API/third-party app stuff took off, but at that point, it was still mostly a holdover from previous examples of Spez being a shithead. The thing that really gave it (new) life was that AMA.

That Was the Day by The The

England’s already the snooping capital of the west, isn’t it?

It seems that every time a new privacy-invading technology comes floating down the pike, England just instantly adopts it. They don’t even hesitate -it’s like, “Ooh… new survellance technology? I’ll take that one and that one and that one and… you know what? Just give me the lot!”

And every time, I cynically reflect on the fact that Orwell was English.

Many think that cogito ergo sum somehow says or at least implies something about the nature of existence, when it in fact does not. So in that sense, it’s not the “big hitter it’s made out to be,” but that’s not a failure of the principle, but a failure of people to understand what it in fact says, or more precisely, does not say.

I suspect that the problem is that when people consider “I think, therefore I am,” they think that that “I” refers to the entirety of their self-image, and therefore says that the entirety of their self-image, in all its details, objectively exists.

That’s very much not what it means or even implies. It never did and was never intended to stipulate anything at all about the nature of this entity I call “I.” Not one single thing. All it ever said or intended to say was simply that whatever it is that “I” am, “I” self evidently exist, as demonstrated by the fact that “I” - whatever “I” might be - think I do.

It’s not a coincidence that Descartes himself formulated the original version of the brain-in-a-vat - the “evil demon.” He was not simply aware of the sorts of possibilities you mention - of the ramifications of the fact that we exist behind a veil of perception - he actually originated much of the thinking on that very topic. He was a pioneer in that exact field.

Cogito ergo sum doesn’t fail to account for those sorts of possibilities - it was explicitly formulated with those sorts of possibilities not only in mind, but at the forefront. And that’s exactly why it only stipulates the one and only thing that an individual can know for certain - that some entity that I think of as “I” self evidently exists, as demonstrated by the simple fact that “I” think I do, since if “I” didn’t exist, there would be no “I” thinking I do.

And more to the point, that’s exactly why it very deliberately says absolutely nothing about the nature of that existence.

No.

I self-evidently have a consciousness (cogito ergo sum), but logic, reason and the available evidence all point to that consciousness being a manifestation of brain activity and shaped by my genetics, environment and experiences, as opposed to an entity unto itself.

If consciousness is an illusion, then what is it that’s experiencing that illusion?

Electric kettle for the water, poured over a bag of strong black tea in a glass, with a bit of sugar. As far as brand goes, I’m not all that picky, just so long as it’s black and plain and relatively strong. Mostly it’s Tetley or Twining’s English Breakfast.

I drank coffee pretty much exclusively for years. I’d drink tea occasionally, and I always liked it well enough, but it just couldn’t hold my interest. The thing that made the difference was drinking it out of a glass.

One day, some years ago, I noticed a scene of Russians drinking tea in a restaurant in a movie and started thinking about it. I was aware that they drank hot tea in glasses, but I’d never really considered it before. I had a nice set of institutional quality highball glasses that I’d gotten from a restaurant that went out of business, so I decided to give it a try. And I’ve never looked back.

As near as I can figure it out, using a glass just made it a complete and satisfying experience. I think that’s part of the reason that tea had never held my interest before - I didn’t have a satisfying way to drink it, day in and day out. I never liked teacups - they’re just too small and dainty to be satisfying. And trying to drink it out of a mug was sort of weird - as if my mouth was expecting coffee and was surprised, and a bit disappointed, to get tea instead. But the glass makes it its own thing, and makes it satisfying in and of itself.

Fuck you I won’t do what you tell me.

No - piracy, since it always carries at least some amount of difficulty and risk, is easy to compete against. And in fact, paid services, including Netflix, have proven that over and over. All it takes is to offer dependable convenience and quality and to treat customers well. People are always willing to pay a reasonable price for that.

The problem is that piracy becomes difficult to compete against when, as Netflix is currently doing, you shift from a business model of providing good service under fair terms for a reasonable price to a business model of providing crappy service under onerous terms for too much money, because the greedy, selfish, short-sighted sacks of shit at the top want to make even more obscene amounts of money. That’s the point at which piracy gains enough of an advantage to outweigh its difficulties and risks.

And when that’s the case, it’s pretty obvious what the real problem is.