#country should do better!

[alexandenigtscreations]

watching the 2024 America election results is brutal

damn it

[ahaura]

im sure its been said already but as the election draws near more and more liberals will come out of the woodwork to shame people with a conscience to give away their vote to the democrats for free. i'm already seeing posts saying "why aren't people more concerned about a trump presidency?" you want to know why? it's because people already know he's bad. everyone already knows what he is and what he's done and what he'll do. there's nothing to discuss. he's a racist despotic worm of a man. there's nothing else to say.

biden is currently president. the genocide is happening under his watch. he's the one funding isra*l and arming them; he's sidestepped congress more than once to give them weapons. by oct. 27, the biden administration already knew that "Israel was regularly bombing buildings without solid intelligence that they were legitimate military targets." the state department/biden have engaged in atrocity propaganda, cast doubt on the legitimacy of the death toll recorded by the gaza health ministry, and so on. the united states is currently in the process of trying to pin the "war in gaza" on netanyahu (see sen. schumer's speech) after months of backing blatant genocide as a means to act as if they're "doing something" about the genocide (Instead of, say, threatening to cut off all aid to israel with the condition that all hostilities in gaza, the west bank, and occupied jerusalem are halted immediately and permanently, allowing palestinians freedom to travel, allowing aid into gaza, etc etc etc.)

the long and short of it is that liberals view their own lives as being worth more than palestinians'. that's it. they'll vote for another 4 years of the guy ushering in genocide and supporting apartheid + settler colonialism because he isn't outright attacking them (despite various laws and rulings happening both at the supreme court level and at the local level all over the country that will endanger people). they'll settle for the illusion of safety and security and shame anyone with a conscience and accuse them of "supporting the republicans" when in an actual democracy you would be able to use your vote as leverage to extract concessions from those who want to be elected. that's how it's supposed to fucking work.

democrats are not owed people's vote. if biden loses, it will be biden's fault; it will be his campaign's fault; it will be the democrats' fault. trump is bad; the republicans are bad. we already know this. this is not an endorsement of either. but if democrats are too cowardly and feckless and servile to the motivations of the american empire and never do anything for their constituents then why the fuck should anyone vote for them. you want to get mad at someone, why don't you do something useful and stop worrying about team-sports with a purely selfish basis and start hounding the people in power who are supposed to serve you, the voter.

[scltbvrns]

homogenising something that has always been inherently diverse will kill us all one day.

[nattousan]

I officially start as an apprentice at a tattoo shop today!! Yippee!!

i've been drawin on myself and others since I was a kid so i guess this was only natural! I'm very excited and also Very terrified!

I can't help but think about the election coming up and how drastically different my future looks depending on who wins. Nobody's gonna want to get tattoos when they can't afford to live in the even Worse hypercapitalist hellscape trump would turn this country into should he get reelected.

How could i escape a potentially dictatorial country when I've been apprenticing and all my savings are gone? What would happen if he succeeds in banning my existence as a trans man and i'm forced to detransition in the eyes of the law? I really don't see anything being sacred when it comes to human rights for this monster and until we know once and for all that he's out, I will not be able to relax.

Alls I can do right now is make sure i VOTE. That's the one thing that will save us. Vote blue. Vote for the future and our potential to improve things under an imperfect but not outright fascist government. Overwhelm the numbers to where there can be no argument as to who won.

please. make sure to vote.

[funkle420]

Don't fucking blame Palestinians and the people who support them for this. Don't blame people who couldn't bring themselves to vote for a genocide-loving centrist for this. Even if all of them voted for Harris it wouldn't have changed the outcome.

The blame you put on the people belongs on HARRIS for refusing to explicitly promise an end to weapons and money to Israel, and end to America's enthusiastic support of the genocide. She refused to listen to the bipartisan majority of Americans who want an end to the genocide! This is not democracy, there is no choice and the people don't have enough leverage over our president if every single election is a choice between the rapid end of the world and a slightly slower end of the world.

[neroniiii]

gange

[seepingfrommyskin]

i really like how looking at kefkas design (in both the game and in the concept art) at first glance it's like oh! what a cool fun guy! and then you play the game and you're like oh okay so he's genuinely the worst

[twpsyn-who]

People saying "Don't boycott Eurovision or Israel will win!!" - they already won the second they got past the semifinals. Israel is going to be the winner of this year, especially with the way things are going down at the moment.

You wanted Israel to not win? You guys should've made sure they didn't get to the finals to begin with- though I wouldn't doubt EBU would've changed some votes or pulled some bullshit to add Israel in the finals regardless of making it or not.

[treba-neco-napise]

i hate having four fucking ads on a 20-minute podcast episode.

(it's a rant, enjoy.)

no, i don't want to get your shitting plus subscription, i don't even pay for 95% of the films and shows i watch online. stop fucking begging for patrons, it's not our problem you want to do this full-time. good for you if you do it but it's not somehow our duty to get you there just because you're a creator. not everyone can afford 60 fucking subscriptions. instead of people getting the minimum to at least get by as a basic human right, i bet like 85% of creatives online are making elite clubs on patreon and shit for those who have spare money. i get that you need it, but so many people (especially PDA neurodivergents) are extremely put off by being asked to pay and won't do it (like me) just because of that. i've encountered art that had the option to pay without requiring it, and I did. because they deserved it anyway, and they understood the classism and capitalism ingrained in the internet creative culture and that a lot of people don't have the means to become members of the club. i'm planning on starting a podcast, been wanting to publish fiction in paper since i was a kid, and i still want to make all that 100% free with the option of payment, because i believe that knowledge, stories and art should be accessible to anyone, regardless of financial situation (what do you think libraries are for, hm?????). when it's not, that's when elitism starts to rise and i'm just too tired for that shit. the empty snobbery culture around modern art alone is driving me insane.

Starkid has been recording their performances for years and guess what - they're massive, they sell out, people attend their live plays for the experience, but those who can't are still able to be a part of the fandom (as opposed to broadway musicals that get shared through bootlegs, hm) and they don't expect their fans to be responsible for their means of living. people who want to see a live performance, to buy your book in a bookshop professionally bound and keep it, to thank you for making your day by buying you a coffee will do so of their own free will. don't beg them to pay for your groceries if you made the choice to put your art out there. it's the system that is responsible for taking care of your basic needs, not your fans.

[anotherpapercut]

the girlbossification of ruth bader ginsburg has to be one of the most just plain annoying aspects of white liberal feminism. like it's not as actively harmful as a lot of other shit obviously. but it is soooooo annoying. if I never see another notorious rbg tote bag as long as I live it will be too soon

[bongosinferno]

I'm on episode 5 of the Fallout show; NO WHAT THE HELL I LITERALLY THOUGHT TO MYSELF "MAN I'M BEGINNING TO LIKE THIS SHOW" AND THEN THEY JUST REMOVE THE NCR FROM CANNON. WHY. THAT'S SUCH A FRUSTRATING CHOICE

also STOP PLAYING ON THE NOSE MUSIC I CAN UNDERSTAND THE PLOT WE DON'T NEED CONSTANT 50S MUSIC

[kideternity]

There’s something really fascinating about the fact that one of the major themes that keeps appearing in Amazon is that of like, xenophobia? Like xenophobia against Amazon? Amazon is often persecuted and mistreated by the people he's trying to protect just because he looks and acts “strange”. He was attacked by a group of men who tried to kill him because they thought of him to be a murderer, he was later arrested by the police and then hounded by paparazzi for being “weird” or “suspicious”, A scientist learns of him and gets the idea he should literally study amazon- treat him as a specimen to be dissected then as a real person- he’s later harassed and literally restrained by another mob of people all because some random lady thought him simply playing with her son was something Nefarious / lead to something nefarious. Even Ritsuko, one of the major supporting characters, has a major part of her character be about overcoming her negative assumptions and thoughts about Amazon (There’s one episode, though i'm unsure if the subs cross over to all versions, where she literally tells him to Leave Japan and go back to the Amazon Jungle because he’s the reason all of the trouble came to Japan in the first place. Sounds awfully familiar to certain talking points, doesn’t it)

All of this occurs simply because Amazon does not fit into the ideal of the average Japanese citizen. He wears little clothing, he acts very erratically and energetically, and most imperatively of all he has a language barrier in that he can't communicate like speak Japanese fluently. Amazon is not in anyway a bad or dangerous person, but due to the culture/environment he was raised in and how that differs to what people expect as the norm, he’s more likely to be perceived as a threat.

I can not confidently say this was intentionally built into the show, but considering the innately political nature of Kamen Rider, at least Showa era Rider, I would be inclined to believe it’s more likely than not that Amazon's persecution by others is meant to at least tie in some way to a commentary about the deeply harmful nature of xenophobia. It makes Amazon's feelings, as well as his choice to still choose to care for others and to help them, a lot more impactful + heart wrenching for me personally. He’s literally just trying his best and so many people hate him. Cut the guy some fucking slack.

[dsabian]

I do not understand how this can happen once. But now it's happened twice.

Just an fyi, it's not just america that's going to suffer for the next four years. I'm Australian and I never felt closer to WWIII than when trump was in last time.

Is it sexism? Is that what got him over the line?

Whatever.

Right now, this minute (unless it's bed time in america idk) I want those of you with morals to start working toward the presidency. Every one of you. I don't care about your age, gender, sexuality, ethnicity. If you think ppl should have bodily autonomy, if you think grabbing women Anywhere without their permission is bad, if you think every one of your citizens should be treated equally, if you think war is very bad and there's always a better solution, then start working toward the white house. Flood the options with good ppl. If the only politicians available in four years are those with ethics, then your incredibly weird way of voting won't matter anymore.

Basically, the next four years are what they are. Focus on what comes next.

[camgoloud]

you know, i’ve never in my life been blackout drunk before. this may change sometime in the next couple of days

[awkward-teabag]

I have to wonder how many people celebrating AI translation also complain about "broken English" and how obvious it is something was Google translated from another language without a fluent English speaker involved to properly clean up the translation/grammar.

Because I bet it's a lot.

I know why execs are all for it—AI is the new buzzword and it lets them cut jobs thus "save" money and not have to worry about pesky labour laws when one employs humans—but everyone else?

There was some outcry when Crunchyroll fired many of their translators in favour of AI translation (with some people to "clean up the AI's work") but I can't help but think that was in part because it was Japanese-to-English and personally affected them. Same when Duolingo fired many of their translators in favour of LLM translation. Meanwhile companies are firing staff when it's English to another language and there's this idea that that's fine or not as big a deal because English is "easy" to translate and/or because people don't think of how it will impact people in non-English countries.

Also it doesn't affect native English speakers so it doesn't get much headway in the news cycle or online anyway because so much of the dominant media is from English-speaking countries and English-speakers dominate social media.

But different languages have different grammar structures that LLMs don't do, and I grew up on "jokes" about people speaking in "broken English" and mocking people who use the wrong word when it was clearly a literal translation but the meaning was obvious long before LLMs were a thing, too. In fact, the specific way a character spoke broken English has been a way to denote their native tongue for decades, usually in a racist way.

Then Google translate came out and "Google-translated English" became an insult for people and criticism of companies because it was clearly wonky to native speakers. Even now, LLMs—which are heavily trained on English compared to other languages—don't have a natural output so native English speakers can clock LLM-generated text if it's longer than a sentence or two.

But, for whatever reason, it's not seen as a problem when it goes the other way because fuck non-English readers or people who want to read in their native tongue I guess.

[courfeyrec]

sims 3 vs sims 4 articles are so funny they're all like:

sims 3 has this super cool feature! but sims 4 runs better. sims 3 has this other different super cool feature! but sims 4 runs better. sims 3 has another other super cool feature!! but sims 4 runs better. which is better? wow that's a really hard question haha they're both good you know? because sims 3 has all these super cool features. but sims 4. sims 4 runs better.