So RDR2O is good? I love RDR2, and I’ve played the campaign to death. But I tried online and found it…meh. Maybe I didn’t invest in it and I was looking for a more cohesive story or maybe a helping hand in getting my toes wet, but it just felt like there was nothing novel or interesting to do. I’m sure playing with someone makes it a lot more fun. I was really looking for more of the campaign. That’s not what it is.
I mean, factoring in advertising costs and shit, especially with a huge advertising push, could make that total number rise dramatically. And when you actually have the government pumping you full of money, you find ways to spend it. When other games end up asking themselves if they can afford to ____ because the timeline is _____, this kind of production gets to say, “do it. Hire more people.” And it doesn’t have to involve crunch.
I mean, is it saving users money though? It’s not, the charge is that it’s just taking other affiliate code out of the link and replacing it with its own. And just doing it to small creators? I don’t know that much about it, maybe that last part isn’t true. But it’s not saving them money that’s the problem, but replacing affiliate links with their own. And they’re saying that it’s just that they were the “last click,” even if it was from an affiliate site. Meaning they probably put it in their code somewhere to briefly load honey looking for “deals,” meaning they were the last one to redirect the click and then they get the money.
Will be interesting to see how they were doing it.
Nah, I mean it’s just a little silly. “Every clock is a cop?”
I get the sentiment, and I agree. But you have to be pretty deep in the anarchist “lore” (for lack of a better word) to see what they’re saying. For normal people walking by, seeing this (the ones who most need to be swayed), it just comes across as fully unserious. Incredibly silly.
I think this kind of leftist silliness-taken-seriously stems from the yippies. When serious socialist and leftist factions were rising up and spreading in popularity, the yippies came along and turned the entire movement into something utterly silly—now, do I believe that anarchism should be based on joy? Of course. Do I actually like the yippies? Of course. Because I do believe in whimsy, humor, and joy as the basis for life. But I truly do think that, again, you need to be rooted in the “lore” of true leftism to see what they were doing and take it seriously while you also try to levitate the pentagon.
I do firmly believe that this forward facing silliness (joy-forward, instead of misery-in/joy-out, if you will) turned the entire leftist movement in the US into a self-defeating trend. And it shaped the entire perception and almost all of its antics for the rest of time. It just plays right into the fascist counterpoints: “they’re incredibly weak and incredibly dangerous.” Because on both sides of the coin, the crunchy sit-in at Zucotti park to…end capitalism(?) and the capturing, occupying, and torching of city blocks and police stations in 2020, they have the perfect footage to show. Both of those cases in point were true action—the two biggest examples of true action I’ve seen in my lifetime in the US. But one had cops and news anchors trembling in fear and clutching their pearls while the other started out as a true action then sort of fizzled and flopped about in its own unseriousness. The latter turned from a focused demonstration borne out of true anger and then just languished in this weird all-encompassing crunchy hang sesh complete with jugglers and all carnival sights.
The US left is just terminally stuck between its two identities, never fully realizing it’s potential as a result. Maybe we’re seeing less of that as time goes on, but that’s in response to a fully serious uprising of fascists. We’ll see what the next few years bring.
I found indisputable proof of this happening.
We were using Google maps, driving in a production van. We were talking about the song “Gasolina” by daddy yankee. The person whose phone it was did not speak Spanish. Moments later we were being served suggestions to stop at “estaciones de gasolina”
Oh, have they been hiding it? Seems pretty goddamn apparent to me.
Yeah, this is definitely an issue that needs attention.
But…
That thumbnail. What secret is that hacker carrying in their little tummy basket? It looks like a scrumptious little bitty secret
In my experience, plenty of local shops delivered. And when Uber eats came about, they had to fire their own delivery people because so many would check Uber eats first. Not to mention the restaurants get less on the food, when small, locally owned restaurants are already surviving on razor thin margins.
So the idea for these services is basically “I don’t want to go to my local restaurant to pick up food, so I’m going to financially hurt them so a middleman can profit by forcing them to deliver to me (which plenty were doing already).”
My point is it’s such a uniquely stupid, uniquely American concept that hurts everyone involved, and makes a ton of money for one large company—who completely inserted themselves into it unnecessarily.
If the argument is whether or not there should be a moral dilemma when ordering from them, I say yes. We can’t absolve ourselves of our laziness on this one, I don’t think.
And the likening it to insurance companies was strictly for the purpose of a meaningless middleman who changed the structure of the system they exist in, in order to profit unnecessarily. I tried to make it clear the likeness stopped there, but maybe I wasn’t.
ETA: you also can’t discount the factor of newer restaurants trying to open, who now don’t even have the foothold of existing in-house delivery in order to wrest some of their own profits back from fuckin uber. For those previously existing businesses, of course some of their established customers would still use their delivery, but UE bit off a huge chunk of their business. But newer places? Forget it. They don’t stand a chance. It’s just a leech company looking at smaller businesses’ profits and saying, “hey, by name recognition alone, we could take a bunch of that by making an app and not even hiring employees but forcing people to use their own vehicles so we don’t have to pay for any of that shit.”
It’s indefensible.
Ah, rape humor. Does it ever get old?
It shouldn’t, because it should’ve been aborted.
I a, bothered by the ratio of what I pay extra for third party services as compared to what the delivery person receives. You can’t possibly drive the price up further
The solution already existed. It’s called restaurants delivering their own food. But Ubereats shoehorned their way into the equation to be an unnecessary middleman in order to profit. Exploiting a whole new group of people in the process.
I absolutely share the moral dilemma with the concept of third party delivery. They’re just as useless as health insurance companies, so if you see the problem with the latter, you can def see the problem with the former. (Not to say they’re on the same scale or have similar histories or have equal amounts of blood on their hands, just that they’re similar in structure in a system that work(s)/(ed) fine without them.)
What’s the temperature over there? I mean, people see Elon as a fuckin hack and a joke, right? He doesn’t have as dedicated of a boot licking club? Or do a good amount of Germans actually buy into his “I’m a genius inventor and a respectable iconoclast who should be listened to” nonsense?
Please tell me he’s going to realize how limited his influence is come February. Please.
Dude. If it turned out to be a new mega-season of Punk’d where Ashton Punk’d all of us for the last…like…15 years, starting with the 2010 midterms? Oh man. I guess that’d also explain where Ashton has been all this time.
That makes sense, you’re probably right
Well, the party and those who faithfully serve it probably live a pretty nice life. I’m assuming, based on other totalitarian parties throughout history.
I DDG’ed and found this was done by a street artist from DC, it seems. Unless the “MonolithDC” means something else, I dunno.
Like, we found acceptable, beautiful levels of graphics years ago.
We’re not the ones saying “make it look even better.” They are the ones that seem to be whipping themselves into some frenzy and saying “we can’t keep doing this!”
So fuckin stop.
By staying the course. Literally. Their desire for profits is what’s causing the extinction of humanity.
That’s…incredibly reductive. If there were a new machine that whipped slaves automatically so the landowner didn’t have to, would the progressive be for it because it was a technological advancement?
You can’t honestly believe that technological advancements, no matter their use, no matter their owners, no matter who they will hurt, and no matter how quickly it’ll destroy the climate are supported by leftists because they’re progressive.
In the slave-whipping machine example, it would’ve been technology that solidified the existing paradigm without questioning the underlying problems with the system. “Think of all the art the white man can create now that he won’t while away his day overseeing his slaves! Think about how regressive that is!” Exactly like AI. This is a tool that, IN AN ONGOING CLIMATE EMERGENCY, is sucking up the limited available fresh water, using exponential amounts of energy, and is currently in the hands of the ruling class.
Because it can also…what? Make pictures and videos and write things so humans don’t have to use their own creativity? So it can finally eliminate any job that that people actually want to do to find some way to utilize creativity in a disgustingly repressive capitalist society? That’s why we have to accept any technological advancement?
Look at all of the other more recent tech advancements. Cellphone, email, internet, etc. They definitely offer a lot of democratizing tools and creative tools. But…it brought the rise of tech monopolies, unlimited surveillance, new ways to accumulate data to sell. It also upped productivity drastically, and thus profits.
We are living in a world increasingly dominated by tech and it’s all in the hands of the ruling class—they’ve literally turned us and out data into products. It is not “conservative” to say these things are bad. It’s not “conservative” to see the pattern we’ve been following with these tech advancements in the age of tech megacorps, and say “I see where this is going and it’s not great.”
It’s fucking stupid to NOT recognize the pattern and say “but this time it’s gonna be awesome!”
I mean, I gotta say if you’re at all leftist and don’t see an issue with the potential of AI in the hands of the people it’s currently in, then I don’t know how you square that with your ideals.
Not to mention, this tool, in these hands, in the current state of late stage capitalism is a dangerous, dangerous road. Yeah, AI can make pictures for spreading leftist messages. But you can’t ignore the massive environmental toll it’s taking, the people’s livelihood it’s threatening, and the current paradigm it exists in, making this a very dangerous tool with the potential to be a huge power solidifier for the ruling class. Think US hegemony and the nuke.
It’s neat. But the context makes AI a very volatile next step in the class war.
I dunno. Because when creators are pushing those affiliate links, they’re offering discounts. That’s why their users go there. And if honey was giving them a bigger discount, I’m sure that’s not illegal. But if it was just poaching the 10% 94 whatever the creator was already offering, giving them still 10%, but taking that “last click” because it checked?
Who knows, the company is bigger and has PayPal at its back. So might makes right in US law. I’m sure that will be the outcome. But I’ve been surprised before.