A lot of people did in fact set aside Gaza until Trump was stopped. As for those that didn’t, they should have listened to Bernie Sanders. I did months ago and went all-in on Dem support. There were multiple times when I wrote up an angry post about US support of Israel and then didn’t post it because I didn’t want to turn a voter into a non-voter or worse a Trump supporter.

I understand their position of never rewarding ethnic cleansing and war crimes though. They chose to make sure the Dems know they would never “settle” for the illegal killing of civilians. The support for Israel made it especially hard for Arab Americans to vote Dem. It’s difficult to support a party that has been in power during the whole conflict yet gives unconditional support for the internationally condemned murder of Arabs.

I’m sure a lot also felt disenfranchised by the bipartisan protest suppression and condemnation. Even in Dem states peaceful protesters were punished, and sometimes pro-Israeli protesters who attacked got away with it. Then there was the whole “vote with us or else” pressure that went on for months. Dissenters like the “uncommitted” voters were insulted by the party that wanted their unconditional support.

So it’s not like it’s completely insane. But as Sanders points out that position only makes things worse and has done so.

I like that it’s moderated fairly lightly but reasonably. Often I can have an actual discussion with someone who doesn’t agree with me without either of us getting banned by a mod who likes one side or the other. From what I see generally a user needs to be very obviously abusive/racist/violent before a mod steps in, even if the content is controversial.

I dislike that I’ve needed to heavily restrict my use for my mental health until after the election. A lot of people (not all by any means) believe it’s ok to bully and abuse other users because their cause is righteous - it’s already shown up in this thread. E.g. the daily posts and comments, with a lot of upvotes/support, that label anyone who disagrees with or criticizes Kamala (used to be Biden)/Democrats a bot, idiot, worse than useless, foreign agent and so on. I’m not talking about downvoting which is just expressing disagreement - I’m talking about outright insults and upvoting those. The attitude of “vote with/support me or else” has no place in a democracy founded on free voting without persecution, even if the bully is sure they’re right. If I didn’t mention it, perhaps even though I have, we might see a version of “but it is actually ok this time” and reasons why. It’s happened before.

Guess what? Very few “policy bullies” think they are evil - they’re positive it’s justified. Christians demand abortion bans, Muslim deportation, religion in schools/government and so on because they truly believe they are saving eternal souls. I was raised in that environment. That a sizable amount of Lemmy users believe it’s correct/admirable to insult others into “proper” behavior makes them very similar in character to those religious extremists IMO. Apparently when the issue is really important abuse is ok.

I’ll end by saying Gaza/Palestine is incredibly important to me - I am legitimately very upset frequently by the stories and media. However, Bernie Sanders convinced me to support Biden and then Kamala. Bernie laid out his argument with logic and facts and did not once insult my position. I also doubt the aggressive posts/comments are winning over undecideds. “I wasn’t sure if I should vote Democrat until I was called a harmful idiot and had my concerns dismissed as being in bad faith”.

“Hang loose” is what you tell someone who needs to chill out and let the waves carry them away from their problems man. Align your chakras with the Earth and so on.

Seriously though, the reason I wrote like that is I’m using the slang of roughly 90s/2000s-ish California surfer culture, which is where the hand signal was used to tell people to relax and be happy. Or say hi and let them know you are relaxed and happy. If you imagine it as a gang sign for surfer hippies you aren’t far off.

Dude, radical emoji. That’s just a gnarly way of tell someone to hang loose, bro. I’ve usually seen it done left-to-right instead of up-and-down, but the universe is infinite so if you wanna flip it that’s totally copacetic.

Edit: I started thinking about surfers and it dragged up memories of this legend on Tosh.0

I find some irony in corporate Reddit unilaterally bullying mods when the reason that I’m here on Lemmy is because so many mods acted like petty tyrants to me and other users. Reddit is full of institutionalized bullying and sorting users into echo chambers of whatever brand of hate and slurs the sub mods are into. It pains me to see so many users still on that site and I hope most of them are bots because Reddit was not good for my mental health at least.

I can think of two fairly active potential homes for that content: Showerthoughts, which is for random trains of thought that you think others might relate to. Lemmy Be Wholesome is for content that you feel elevates people’s moods, is supportive, shares good vibes and so on.

All hail our Lord and Savior Gaben, and treasure the relics of his reign:

I’d love to have another campaign set in the Planescape setting of DnD, or the equivalent planar cosmology of Paizo’s Pathfinder. Both are packed with unique and interesting places, races, and individuals. The cool thing about a planar campaign is that you can include a visit to the Prime Material (aka “normal fantasy”) areas anytime you want.

Of course this is just opinion (and it’s been a long time since I played DOS:2) but what I noticed were mainly refinements (facial expressions, voice acting, graphics) and scope. There’s also the sheer amount of content variation in BG3 in that you can play a handful of times and see a lot of completely new reactions, dialogue, and quests depending on decisions and party composition. For instance just picking a Dark Urge character or not can make the game feel different.

BG3 is my personal best game played in 25 years of gaming. There are very few developers that I would trust to perform on the same level as Larian, who really have set a new high bar for the industry.

• FromSoftware (makers of Dark Souls/Elden Ring/Armored Core) consistently puts out bangers although I don’t know if their ARPG experience would translate well.
• CDPR (Witcher games, Cyberpunk 2077) if they’ve learned their lesson from the 2077 launch. Maybe I’m too hopeful, but I think they have and Phantom Liberty/2077 is really good now.
• Owlcat (Pathfinder games, Rogue Trader 40k) if they are given the resources to keep the game in development until bugs are ironed out. Owlcat makes games that are rough on launch and amazing two years later. Mechanically the games are unbalanced (although usually in a fun, ridiculous way) but the writing is top-notch.

Interesting fact: Einstein cheated on his wife with, and eventually married, his first cousin. “Their mothers were sisters, thus making them maternal first cousins. The couple were also paternal second cousins (i.e. their fathers were first cousins).”

Another interesting fact: as many as 80% of all marriages historically were between first or second cousins. About 10% of all marriages in the world today still are, and up to 50% in some areas.

Now if you don’t mind, I have a banjo to tune.

You may just have a bad hairdresser. I put up with “ok” haircuts for months when I moved into a new area, then one month I decided to try a 2nd shop instead. I brought the same pictures to both places but the 2nd place was immediately better and fixed the problems. She even remarked that my issue was something the 1st shop should have recognized immediately because it was a) obvious and b) not hard to remedy. Don’t be afraid to visit another place if you have one available.

Usually one of the first steps is dehumanization - make your targets “less than human” in the eyes of the population. Nazis famously did it by comparing Jews to rats. You’ll notice in a lot of recent Israeli press releases and media Palestinians are referred to as “inhuman animals” or some variation of that. By creating that disconnect between your targets and “normal, healthy” humans you reduce empathy and make harsher treatment seem acceptable.

Another step is to make your audience disgusted or angry. Studies show there’s a link between those two emotions and harsher judgments (although degree/method is still very much an area of research). To invoke disgust you may use words like “filthy, wretched, diseased, mindless” etc. Using the Nazi example again, they made cartoons that showed Jews as dirty, greasy and generally disgusting. To make people angry convince them your targets are “immoral, violent, bloodthirsty” and so on. Nazis leaned heavily into blaming Jews for society’s ills and calling them thieves. Both effects can be made greater if your audience is conditioned to be sensitive to anger/disgust, i.e. being raised to believe in strict definitions of purity and so on. For Nazis it was the idea that Aryans were racially superior. For Zionism it often involves teaching people they are “God’s chosen” with other races not having the same rights (like rights to dwell in territory claimed by Israel) because of religion.

So if you can make your victims seem less than human and enrage or disgust your audience you convince people to do horrible things. They won’t feel like they are doing it to valuable humans and often think it’s a form of justice or necessary cleansing. Using the above psychological “levers” can shift perceptions so large populations view some other group as different to relatable, valid people.

The defining characteristic is usually direct oversight/power. Can the person reward/punish/fire you? If so then there are ethical concerns involved in a relationship (although a relationship may not be strictly forbidden). Is the person an authority figure like a police officer? Same deal.

Relationships are complex enough that judgments should be, and to the best of my knowledge often are, made on a case-by-case basis. E.g. of course police officers can still have relationships, but they can’t say “Date me if you don’t want a ticket”. For bosses working every day with employees it’s also tricky. In the professional circles I know of it’s considered risky for a boss to be sleeping with an employee but not forbidden. What is outright illegal is pressuring an employee into a relationship of any kind. Sexual/romantic relationships can still happen, but consent has to be clearly stated and unforced.

From the American Medical Association (and many other countries have similar guidelines): "In general, physicians should not treat themselves or members of their own families. However, it may be acceptable to do so in limited circumstances:

• In emergency settings or isolated settings where there is no other qualified physician available. In such situations, physicians should not hesitate to treat themselves or family members until another physician becomes available.
• For short-term, minor problems."

Also, the Witcher storyline was pretty well wrapped up after 3.

I’m not sure if it’s been confirmed if Geralt is even in this game, much less the protagonist. CDPR said the game is going to be part of a new AAA trilogy and that apparently it will feature a new School of the Lynx. I don’t have more info than that, but there’s hints they may be starting a completely new arc with new characters/protagonist.

I agree CDPR fumbled 2077’s launch, but 2077 is pretty great now. I also think CDPR felt thoroughly chastised and they seem to have learned from that launch. Witcher 3 was one of the greatest RPG’s period IMO, especially open-world. I’m not going to pre-order without good reason (primarily because I almost never ever do), but I’ve still got goodwill in the tank and I’m looking forward to seeing the game develop.

“Woke” is just code for “anything I don’t like, don’t understand, or wasn’t raised with”. Part of the problem is that people don’t like their way of life being challenged by the mere existence of cyclists and public transit. The other part is that in many countries the infrastructure (roads, sidewalks, etc) aren’t optimized for cycling and that can cause problems when cars, pedestrians, and cyclists are dodging each other.

Swen describes how relieved his team was that they weren’t going to be doing more Baldur’s Gate, and even in BG3 development they talked about the difficulties of making 5E DnD work in a video game past 12th level. Larian clearly gave all they had for 6 years of development and they didn’t chop it into DLC the way a lot of studios would have. In my mind it’s like BG3 launched in “Game of the Year Complete Edition” with all DLC included.

Part of what made BG3 special was how excited the team was about working on it. I’m actually happy to hear they aren’t going to try and force more content. I’m looking forward to seeing what they make with the ideas they’re excited about next.

Swen is so awesome. Just wants to make quality games and treat people well.