Mnemnosyne

joined 2 years ago
[–] Mnemnosyne 2 points 7 months ago

In small (population-wise) rural areas like that, where positions are running uncontested or only contested in the primary, it's actually possible individuals could make a difference. But there's some caveats.

If the area is extremely Republican and would never vote for a Democrat, don't run as one. Unlike in races like President and Senate, independent and third party are actual choices at this level, they're not simply false choices.

An individual could find some local issue that matters to a lot of people in the area but seems to be being ignored. Talk to neighbors, local people, etc, figure out what they're upset about that actually falls under the purview of local or state government, then make that the core of your platform.

As long as you're not officially listed as a Democrat, you're not platforming on things that the locals would never vote for (and you probably couldn't do anything about anyway in the lower office you're running for) and you've actually done some local research and found an issue that a significant number of people in your area are upset about, you actually have a chance. You'd probably lose, but there's a real chance.

[–] Mnemnosyne 13 points 7 months ago (1 children)

I'm not sure what to think of this. On the one hand the author is right, for this to happen days before release does speak to some massive incompetence in oversight of this project.

But if the game was really that bad, I kinda have to applaud somebody for finally making the decision to shitcan it. We complain a lot about unfinished garbage being released, so if this was that, then good that they didn't push it out and try to at least make some money before it flopped. Reminds me of back when Blizzard actually cared about quality and scrapped some of their games because they decided they were not good enough.

[–] Mnemnosyne 31 points 7 months ago (3 children)

If they raise the prices in those countries they would make less money because volume of subscribers would go down enough for total income to decrease.

If they lowered the price in the US, they would make less money because the subscribers they would gain would not be enough to offset the reduced income from each.

That's it, it has nothing to do with operating costs or fairness, it's just a question of what price point they believe will make them the most money in a given market.

[–] Mnemnosyne 10 points 7 months ago

Odd to me is Her Majesty's instead of His, considering Charles is now King.

Do these places just retain the gender of the ruling monarch at the time of their construction?

[–] Mnemnosyne 1 points 7 months ago (1 children)

I never really thought about the fact that 3/5 scions, plus the twins, all have white hair before...

[–] Mnemnosyne 1 points 7 months ago

Nier Replicant?

[–] Mnemnosyne 4 points 7 months ago

It's kind of a difficult issue. Jury nullification has been used for both good and bad, with the simplest and most obvious examples being from Civil War type stuff - people who unambiguously broke the law against helping slaves escape have had their verdicts nullified. Good thing. But also people who lynched black people in the south have had their verdicts nullified. Bad thing.

Making sure that verdicts are determined purely based on the law and whether the law was broken means that people need to work to change the law, they can't just apply the law unevenly by nullifying against some defendants and not against others. So I can see the case for nullification being a bad thing. Ideally, you deal with that by removing or reworking the law so that it doesn't come to the point of needing nullification.

But, well, reality isn't ideal. Still, it's unavoidable - as long as a jury can't be forced to explain the reasoning behind their verdict beyond insisting 'I was not convinced of guilt beyond a reasonable doubt' and as long as a jury verdict of Not Guilty is final and cannot be retried, jury nullification will de facto exist. That said, it's the entire system not just 'this judge' that is attempting to prevent jury nullification from happening. The judge's question about following the law is boilerplate standard basically everywhere, and it's a systematic and intentional attempt to weed out potential jury nullifiers.

[–] Mnemnosyne 4 points 7 months ago (2 children)

That's exactly the reason for those questions. So they can ask 'would you consider using jury nullification' without informing people that jury nullification exists.

And also so that if you at some point admit something that sounds like you're voting not guilty because you disagree with the law, they can kick you off the jury and possibly charge you with perjury.

If you ever find yourself in a jury and intend to nullify, you must not admit it ever: you must maintain simply that you are not convinced by the evidence.

[–] Mnemnosyne 3 points 7 months ago

Yup, exactly. The only regulation I'd be in favor of for AI is this: if it was trained on data which can be accessed by or was posted by the public, it must be freely available, such that if anything in the training data was posted online in a way anyone can see, then then I have free access to tge AI too.

Basically any other regulation, even if the companies whine publicly, is actually one that benefits them by raising the barrier of entry and making it more expensive for small actors to create AI tools.

[–] Mnemnosyne 1 points 7 months ago

They've gotten smart enough to use reverse psychology on this kind of thing.

This very much feels like “Only please, Brer Fox, please don’t throw me into the briar patch.”

[–] Mnemnosyne 3 points 7 months ago (1 children)

It feels to me like people did unite after those attacks...it was the crazy conspiracy theories about them that really seemed to get the ball rolling as far as division goes.

Thing is, Republicans have been using any crisis and our 'unite behind leadership' behavior to fuck us since before Reagan, so I'm not sure it's really such a bad thing that we stopped 'uniting'.

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