Yes and no.

It’s inline skating and grafitti and even some of the same characters, but it’s a big sprawling semi-open world with a whole bunch of things to do and find. And it has one of the best soundtracks ever.

It’s sort of short. Since there are so many things to find and unlock and places to explore, the first time through it will likely take a while, but once you learn where everything is, it’s pretty short.

Paper Mario, Jet Set Radio Future, Oblivion, Valley.

I’m pretty certain that Netanyahu had an extra argument tailor-made just for Trump.

He told him that the US could sweep in and impose regime change like they did in Venezuela, and then they could get Narges Mohammadi out of prison snd in appreciation, she’d give him her Nobel (medal). and then Trump would be the bestest president ever because he’d have two Nobels (medals).

I’m not joking.

I’m fairly certain that their idea of meaningful review is making sure that clankers all say what a great guy and beautiful, perfect, beloved President Donald Trump is and how beautiful and perfect his ballroom is going to be and how mean and nasty Democrats are and especially that bastard Obama who thinks he’s so cool because he got a Nobel and Donald Trump is the most awesomest president ever in the history of ever and that’s why he deserves every Nobel and did I mention the ballroom?

Piefed by default auto-subscribes accounts to a curated set of communities, auto-hides downvoted content and downvoted posters, attaches icons to accounts to mark those that have beyond a particular threshold of downvotes and entirely blocks links to a curated set of sites because Rimu deemed them to be unacceptable.

The only saving grace is that at this point those (anti-)features are generally toggleable at least at the admin level, but that’s thanks to wjs018.

I dunno. I just noticed it as it was happening.

Try it and see.

It takes all of about a minute to sign up for an instance and it doesn’t cost anything, so there’s no reason not to do it. If you like it, great and if you don’t, you’re not out anything.

For the record I actually prefer KBin/MBin - they just have a better interface than Lemmy. But KBin was a one-man effort and when the guy running it burnt out, it soet of fell by the wayside. MBin is a fork that was meant to be a more open project, but the guy who was mostly responsible for it is a bit of a twat and mostly used it to pimp Monero, so it never quite caught on like it should have.

You might also sign up for an instance or two on piefed. The guy who’s mostly responsible for that is also a bit of a twat, but he’s had some good help and some people pushing back against his tyrannically censorious tendencies, so it’s pretty decent.

The only way you’re ever really going to know what you think about any of them is to try them out for yourself. And there’s literally no reason not to.

That’s about the weirdest part of this whole thing to me.

It really is just The Emperor’s New Clothes played out in real life, as a wide swath of people who certainly know better all studiously pretend that the President of the United States is not a petty, shallow, vindictive, willfully ignorant and delusional egomaniac with the emotional maturity of a toddler who’s slipping into dementia right before our eyes.

Slurp gobble.

Trump doesn’t have policies. He has whims, urges, compulsions, reflexes and tantrums.

Sorry - I should’ve been more clear.

Just as I try to keep my money put of the hands of scumbag creators, I try to keep my money out of the hands of any and all of the rentseeking scumbags who didn’t create it but try to profit from it anyway, which includes their heirs. It’s just that as far as that goes, it doesn’t matter whether or not the creator was a scumbag - that’s my position in all cases.

I don’t think anybody’s estate is entitled to anything from their work, piece of shit or otherwise.

Yes and no

Yes insofar as the work really does stand alone - if it was suddenly revealed that Vincent van Gogh was a mass murderer, or a space alien, or a Labrador Retriever, or literally any other thing one might imagine, Starry Night would still look exactly the same.

And no insofar as I don’t want my money going to a piece of shit, and to the degree that I can prevent that from happening, I do.

pushing Democrats to the center

Because that worked out so well for them in 2024…

Anybody who’s surprised by this is part of the problem.

If an organization possesses influence or power that can be abused, then it inevitably will be abused. It doesn’t matter how conscientious people are or how many safeguards are put in place - loathsome, power-hungry pieces of shit will angle for position in the organization, and sooner or later some will get through, and they’ll immediately start shifting the organization to accommodate them, which is to say, to accommodate loathsome, power-hungry pieces of shit. And it’s all downhill from there.

I’m not an anarchist by accident.

Gee whiz - who would’ve thought that when a toxic piece of shit bought Twitter it would turn into a home for toxic pieces of shit?

That’s part of why I’ve generally been putting quotation marks around the word “corporation.”

It’s not meaningless though, because the underlying structure will likely remain essentially the same as it was when it was merely a corporation. And the relationship between the “government” and its “citizens” will have evolved from a relationship between a business and its customers/clients, and will undoubtedly retain some aspects of that. Most notably, the whole concept of public servants will vanish. Instead, the “government” will offer some specific services to potential citizens-as-customers, who can take them or leave them. Or, additionally or possibly even alternatively, the “government” will demand specific things of citizens-as-employees who will have the “choice” of following their demands or seeking employment-as-citizenship elsewhere.

In either event (or any other - this can’t possibly be an exhaustive list), the basic dynamic between “government” and “citizen” will be notably different from any of the ones we’ve seen before (though likely broadly most similar to feudalism).

Maintaining a large private army would be expensive and time consuming.

So is maintaining a large workforce and infrastructure, but they do that as a matter of course. And already, there are corporations with operating budgets larger than some countries. That’s only going to become more the case with time.

What stops another corporation with a private army from coming in and robbing them of everything they have?

The same things that generally stop countries from doing it to each other - insufficient forces and/or unacceptable losses and/or a preference for stability and/or established alliances and/or any of countless other considerations.

This isn’t rocket science. Realpolitik is a fairly straightforward thing.

Where is the corporation getting their funding from?

From the sale of goods and/or services.

Duh.

Someone’s got to be paying them.

Yes. Consumers of whatever goods and/or services they provide.

Duh.

So, they are using a sovereign currency created by a government using a central banking system chartered with the government.

Or more likely not.

Here’s just one quick idea - accept local currency with a handling fee sufficient to cover any potential losses on exchange (which are unlikely, since at that point their currency will likely be harder than about any government’s), and advertise a discount for the use of their private currency, accompanied by the offer of free and automatic currency exchange with an account at the corporate bank.

So you promote your currency, avoid the hassle of dealing with competing currencies and gain new bank accounts, all at the same time.

And that’s just one idea, off the top of my head.

I don’t blame them.

Neither the US or Israel can be trusted to negotiate in good faith, and in fact Israel can pretty much be counted on to violate any agreement almost immediately. And to assassinate the negotiators.

I just don’t make u-turns at busy intersections, specifically because they’re problematic.

If I need to go back the way I just came, I make a left into a parking lot, turn around there, then pull back out onto the street, or if that’s not possible, I simply go around the block.

My view is that doing unnecessary things that interrupt the flow of traffic is always a bad idea.