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deltarune really is the relive your childhood (derogatory) simulator. another day of lying in bed until you have no choice to get up and go through the motions of being part of a fragmented family you feel distanced and separated from by fundamental differences in yourself, followed by a long dull stretch of Existing in this purgatorial decaying corpse of a town and pretending to be somewhere else where anything you do actually matters with your only friend who used to hurt you because she could in an attempt to process some of her own feelings of powerlessness, all while the fear that the few kind people in your life who've consented to lower themselves to your level will turn away from you in disgust if they ever learn what you've done and what's being done to you presses down on you, and the future draws inexorably closer like a darkening sky. oh hey fun bullet hell minigame.

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Pay attention to the particulars of Mastercard's responses, because this a textbook example of how to create plausible deniability.

"Mastercard has not barred any legal transaction" is, technically, a true statement – because Mastercard is not the one processing the transactions in the first place. Mastercard does not deal directly with any merchant, and in fact typically refuses to communicate with merchants at all; there's always a payment processing service sitting in between Mastercard and the merchant, whether that's Stripe or Paypal or any of dozens of other service providers.

Consequently, there are two layers of service agreements in place: the agreement between Mastercard and the payment processing service, and the agreement between the payment processing service and the merchant. That second layer of service agreements, between the payment processing service and the merchant, is where all of these content restrictions are being imposed. Mastercard can thus truthfully claim that they aren't barring legal transactions.

Now, if you've been paying attention, you've probably already spotted the issue: if the content restrictions are being imposed upon the merchants by individual payment processing services and not by Mastercard, why do all of those payment processing services seem to have exactly the same content restrictions?

That's where the critical sleight of hand comes in: while Mastercard's own terms of service do not require payment processing services to bar transactions of particular types, their ToS does require payment processors to bar transactions which could be damaging to the Mastercard brand. What constitutes damage to the Mastercard brand is not defined; it means whatever Mastercard wants it to mean. The payment processing services are thus in a position where they can be held in breach of Mastercard's terms of service for basically any reason, which gives them a strong incentive not to test any boundaries.

And that's why Mastercard can truthfully say they have never barred any legal transaction: they're never the ones doing the blocking. The layer of payment processing services that sits between Mastercard and the merchants are enforcing those content restrictions, based on a series of unwritten handshake agreements between the payment processors and Mastercard regarding what does and does not constitute acceptable content – and because the particulars of those handshake agreements aren't in writing, Mastercard can assert that their terms of service do not compel payment processing services to bar any legal transaction and technically be telling the truth.

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By the way, the prosecution just violated Luigi Mangione's HIPAA rights and I have not seen people talking much about it

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two traitors in a ravine

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All good warriors fight for peace

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Fun little drake/dragon piece I did! His name is Mandrake :) Really loved drawing the scales on this one!!

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Literal definition of spyware:

Also From Microsoft’s own FAQ: "Note that Recall does not perform content moderation. It will not hide information such as passwords or financial account numbers. 🤡

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Tip: you can microwave stale croissant for 15-20 seconds and it will become soft and warm and nice. Cut it open, put butter in it. Peace and love

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Would you hurt me if it meant you could save me?

comic for my angel/demon au (cont. below)

⚠️⚠️⚠️ lots of blood

Maybe hurting you will turn out okay.

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fly trap move over, it’s time for the flamingo choker to strike

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hmmm. thinking again about my "on a normal route, kris doesn't actually hate the SOUL. they just hate the circumstances, & are willing to play rough because The SOUL Can Take It" theory.

more specifically, I'm thinking about the end of chapter 1, when Kris does the whole "slowly turning to the camera with a sinister grin" schtick. from a Doylist perspective, the purpose of this scene is to create an intriguing, memorable cliffhanger. but what's the in-universe explanation? why would Kris Dreemurr be putting on a little horror show for an audience that only seems to include the player? why would they seem to revel in it, when their actions in later chapters are subtler and in some cases they actively deny us information?

well... when they were younger...

did they play scary pranks on people they hated, or on someone they considered a friend?

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this was supposed to be funny and then i finished it and its 4am and it just made me sad. does this even make sense or am i sleep deprived!

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if only we weren’t so far apart. i would’ve loved to have a duet with you.

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AND they're both transfem. AND they both SUCK!!!!1!11!!1!!!

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i've been very krisellepilled these days

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welcome to taz royale we have

- griffin mcelroy gruff old wizard voice

- clint mcelroy tiny scamp voice

- travis mcelroy committing to The Aesthetique

- and justin mcelroy still trying to make up for the time he played a twink

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And if I was like. An insane person. I could make post about how Susie being a fan of Godzilla holds more weight than "likes big radioactive monster fights" because fundamentally the wider catalogue of Godzilla movies are about how Godzilla is hopelessly alone (due to being either the last or one of the last of his species), is attacked mercilessly for simply existing, for being too big, too strong, too scary, by the very people who forced him to be that way. And how Godzilla is not meant to be a hero in-universe, even in his most heroic appearances he's usually somewhat begrudging, in one movie Directly Saying Via Monster Telepathy that he doesn't care if the world ends because the humans do nothing but hurt him anyway, but always ends up saving the world because underneath all the hurt he cares deeply for the planet and the few connections he's managed to make, who include a peace-preaching healer that lives to serve humanity and a fellow completely isolated monster he used to butt heads with. But that would be too self-indulgent maybe,