At it’s origins, the Latin script was an alphabet, not 1:1 symbol to word.

You have to go back through a chain of different scripts for different languages from different cultures that influenced it to get to heiroglyphs.

Chinese characters were logograms invented for Chinese and are logograms used for Chinese today. At their origin they were pretty much symbol = word and it mostly still is.

The chinese kinda did just make a character for each word though.

Modern chinese uses plenty of words with multiple characters but Old chinese didn’t really. So character = word was much closer to the truth around the time of the oracle bone inscriptions.

Monopoly. Literally designed to be frustratingly unplayable to represent the frustratingly unplayable user experience of capitalism, but people insist on playing it anyway.

AD&D 2e. Insists it’s a game about exciting fantasy adventuring, then all the rules are about painfully slow tactical minutiae. The combat mechanics are taken from a game about modern naval warfare, hence bigger Armor Class means easy to hit. It’s unclear why anyone thought ships with guns was a good model for medieval sword fighting. Entire sections of rules have to be ignored - hello encumberance - and gameplay regularly has to stop to look up charts, tables or niche rules like grappling.

Screamball. Like ping pong, except the point goes to whoever screams the loudest during a volley. We made it up as teenagers. It was awful.

That’s definitely something to work towards but a general strikes requires years of planning, organising, network building, and just fucktons of money. People still need to eat and pay rent. People will be fired and need help fighting it. The regime is likely to injure and maybe kill.

There hasn’t been a general strike in living memory.

A general strike takes time, it’s not something we can just do. Rushing it and fucking it up would be a huge win for the fascists.

The article suggests that people are willing to pay to have all their games in one place.

A not-insignificant amount of people would rather buy a game they just got free than have to remember to open epic.

This fascist regime has clearly been planning for a while to send the military to attack american cities.

If they feel confident in using the military instead of the death squads they’ve been building under ice, that implies they are optimistic about their control over the military, or at least ready to test that control.

Anyone who thinks there’s an electoral path away from fascism is deluding themselves. They’ll shoot us dead in the street before giving up power.

Though importantly, it’s a word made up by a comedian for comic effect.

The ‘longest’ single chinese character (most strokes required to write) is also the name of a dish. The ‘biang’ in “biangbiang mian” has 58 strokes, and you have to write it twice. It’s also thought to have been made up specifically for it’s complexity. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biangbiang_noodles

We all get those things regardless. The stories we tell ourselves about how the world works don’t affect how the world works.

Life, joy, friends, love, art, pleasure, dopamine, oxytocin, etc.

Anything we’re doing now can still be done without the concept of free will, because we’re already doing it without free will.

I just dont understand this admittantly common argument.

Free will seems like such a psychologically damaging lie. As if blaming yourself for the outcome of every sad movie you’ve watched is somehow motivational.

Since coming to accept that free will is farcically impossible, I feel free to just go about my actions with a sense of curious enthusiasm as to what will happen next, safe in the knowledge that que sera sera - whatever will be, will be.

Generation Kill is a very watchable look at a recon unit in the lead up to the 2nd (iirc) iraq war. It’s by the guy who did The Wire. Excellent dialogue, plotting and acting.

It uses a soldier’s eye perspective to examine the systemic issues in the military - casual racism, war crimes, adult diapers and the constant incompetence of officers all come up.

In employment, Verizon said it will commit to aligning its business in California with the state’s various requirements under its diversity, equity and inclusiveness (DEI) laws, though the company ended its employment-based DEI initiatives last year in order to secure approval from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) for its purchase of Frontier.

The DEI commitments Verizon will make are not expected to conflict with its promises to the FCC, which largely involved hiring and promotional practices.

So CA allows yet more dangerous corporate power consolidation in exchange for just following CA law - but not so much as to conflict with verizon’s anti-DEI promises to the regime.

What a truly progressive victory worthy of gavin newsom.

30% of US adults voted for trump.

Decades of gerrymandering, voter suppression, disinfo campaigns and no small amount of outright fraud brought the current regime to power, not the will of american people.

Because trump is largely irrelevant.

His job is distraction-in-chief. He’s just a dumb patsy - a role he’s spent his life perfecting.

His business career was just laundrering russian mob money, and his political career is just drawing fire from the rich cabal looting the american empire before there’s nothing left to loot.

There was a hilarious study the other month showing that on r/conservative, 30-60% of posts on any given day are 2 posters, who posted every single day - except the day that ukraine strikes knocked out power in moscow.

That sounds like a reasonable and healthy attitude to take.

I’ve started buying 2nd hand physical games, got a cheap record player, buy books from little bookshops, clothes from goodwill and don’t shop online. Not ready for a dumb phone yet.

I grew up in niave 90s with ‘internet will set us free’ thinking. But oligarchs turned the things i liked into poison, so i avoid drinking the poison as much as i can.

The fascists don’t care about consistency or fairness. By definiton they’re opposed to that.

They will without a doubt block anyone else from doing exactly what they are doing.

Killing multiple regime members on the court or expanding the court are the only two options if we want a supreme court that’s capable of upholding the law.

“As far as calling him out, definitely no regrets whatsoever. … I don’t feel as though fate looks upon you often, and when it does, you better be ready to seize the opportunity. And today I think I did that,” Sabula told The Washington Post.

Fucking amen brother.

Jate isn’t a name.

I doubt there were that many voters who oppose project2025 but were swayed away from kamala by thinking it’s not real.

About 30% of us adults voted R. 30-35% is about the maximum support that fascism can muster. Voter suppression won the election, not any particular policy or lie.