No, I don’t think you’re going to do anything either way. When there was only the Raytheon protest, I doubt you called your state representatives about Palestine. Now that they’re also blocking traffic, I’m sure you’ll continue to do nothing.
I think the most effective protest would be one that directly acts against what they’re protesting against, like putting traffic cones on self driving cars or the Tyre Extinguishers deflating tires.
But that kind of protest doesn’t really apply to sending billions of dollars worth of weapons overseas unless you want to do something very illegal or violent. So whatever the people protesting think will help seems good enough to me.
Is getting a news story all that matters for an “effective” protest? If so, you must think blocking traffic is an incredibly effective protest strategy.
Protesters accuse Raytheon of abuses, block plant entrances
It’s amazing how protesters already tried that and nothing happened.
18 people facing charges for allegedly defacing Raytheon sign during protest in Tewksbury
Somehow, the “effective” protests you recommend don’t seem to be doing anything. Do you have any other bright ideas? Maybe something that the average person will actually learn about?
Organic Maps (the app) lets you download maps of various areas ahead of time
https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Street-level_imagery_services#With_photosphere_support
I was also looking into this recently, and I think one of the limiting factors would be the storage and processing power you’d need to blur faces and license plates and then let everyone have access to millions of photos on demand.
food pyramid
You’re really showing your age with this one. The food pyramid got replaced 13 years ago
I don’t know about a distro, but it looks like they are still maintaining an HTPC app for windows, mac and linux. The linux one looks like it was last updated about 2 weeks ago
I know there were a bunch of subreddits with bots that automatically commented Are you looking for this specific thing? on every post, and a lot of posts were answered correctly by those bots.
But new research points to a striking pattern: Higher premiums are being charged in states where regulators apply less scrutiny to requests for rate increases, compared with states where officials question the justifications offered by companies and try to keep rates low, the data show.
Not what I was expecting to read, but not that surprising either.
Not all of it, obviously. But if you want someone else to, you should consider not making them search through a different website to try to find it.
You could at least make it easy and post a link to the pdf
TikTok is addicting and decrease your physical and mental health, it could be a potential manipulation tool and spying tool. Costs overshadow profits.
How is any of that different for any other social media platform? And why is TikTok the only one being banned?
Your link about social media addiction has a similar page for every other social media site, and your link about data harvesting says
Researchers studied the app’s source code and reported it carries out “excessive data harvesting”. Analysts said TikTok collects details such as location, what specific device is being used and which other apps are on it.
However, a similar test carried out by Citizen Lab concluded “in comparison to other popular social media platforms, TikTok collects similar types of data to track user behaviour”.
Similarly, a report by the Georgia Institute of Technology last year stated: “The key fact here is that most other social media and mobile apps do the same things.”
So only banning tiktok tells me that it’s fine for people to be addicted to social media and have their data stolen, but only if it’s an American company doing it.
Alright, if you’re not convinced that there ought to naturally be differentiated pricing, and that the uniform pricing we see is artificial, I don’t know where else to go.
I think my point was more that publishers aren’t going to do that. Back when digital wasn’t the default, it was acknowledged that selling a download was a fair bit cheaper and easier than manufacturing disks or carts that could easily be resold by the customer after they were done with it, but the pricing didn’t change to reflect that. This kind of thing has been going on for a long time, and not just with steam.
Anyway, I enjoyed the discussion but I’m going to call it here.
Fair enough, good night.
I don’t know what you envision when you say “stick around”.
I would expect people to start buying games from the epic games store. They’d be using it regularly and have a sense of ownership over the games they have in their libraries.
What evidence would be needed to convince you?
Honestly, I’m mostly just being pedantic. I’m perfectly willing to believe this kind of clause exists, but I want to acknowledge that at least for now there’s no actual evidence of it.
What other explanation for the observed behavior can be put forth?
For games being the same price on different store fronts? Whatever the justification for selling digital games at the same price as physical games was back when digital purchases were becoming mainstream, or for the same reason that Nintendo games will rarely go on sale: because there are still people willing to pay.
“Selectively enforced” is the wording used by Valve’s own employee.
Is it? Because I pulled the term from the complaint filed Apr 27, 2021 under the Price Veto Provision section. Where did you see a valve employee saying it?
Not to be nitpicky (because this might be solid counter-evidence), but do we know that in a universe without the Steam MFN policy Ubisoft wouldn’t have listed the games concurrently on Steam for 18% higher?
We can go back and look at the historical prices for The Division 2 and see that Ubisoft didn’t have a lower baseline price on their own store compared to the epic store. So either Epic has an MFN policy as well, or Ubisoft would most likely want to keep their prices consistent across platforms and stores.
Strikes me as a little beside the point. A randomly rolled free game once a week isn’t going to change anyone’s purchasing habits or change the landscape of the marketplace. If I want to buy game XYZ, the free weekly does me no good—at most, it gets me to install Epic (which is what they want). But it isn’t going to change the fact that Steam gives more bang for the buck, all else equal.
That’s the thing: you’re being given a random game every week and that’s still not enough to get people to stick around. The games they’re giving away are often pretty good too, and yet it’s not enough to convince people that the Epic Games Store is worth using. And looking at the store now, it seems they’re just giving back 5% of the money you spend, meaning if you opt into their ecosystem, all their games actually are cheaper. At some point you need to admit that people won’t abandon steam just because prices are lower somewhere else. Because the alternative would mean that piracy would be everyone’s preferred method of getting games.
The fact remains, that Steam is preventing games from being listed for less on Epic. So if price isn’t the most important factor, why does Steam feel the need to impose such a policy?
We also don’t really know that they do. The source saying that the MFN policy exists at all is the CEO of Epic Games saying so on twitter. And I’m pretty sure the lawsuit says that it’s “selectively enforced”, so there aren’t any actual examples of Valve vetoing a game’s price based on the price in another store.
Sure, let’s look at that lawsuit.
Steam Key Price Parity Provision. Valve nominally allows game publishers to make some limited third-party sales of Steam-enabled games through its “Steam Keys” program. Steam Keys are alphanumeric codes that can be submitted to the Steam Gaming Platform by gamers to access a digital copy of the purchased game within the Steam Gaming Platform, even when the game is not purchased through the Steam Store. Steam Keys can be sold by rival distributors including the Humble Store, Amazon, GameStop, and Green Man Gaming.
But Valve has rigged the Steam Keys program so that it serves as a tool to maintain Valve’s dominance. Among other things, Valve imposes a price parity rule (the “Steam Key PriceParity Provision”) on anyone wanting to sell Steam Keys through an alternative distributor. Put explicitly by Valve, “We want to avoid a situation where customers get a worse offer on the Steam store.” But that is equivalent to preventing gamers from obtaining a better offer from a competing distributor. The effect of this rule is to stifle price competition.
Because of this rule, Valve can stop competing game stores from offering consumers a lower price on Steam-enabled games in order to shift volume from the Steam Store to their storefronts. Even if a rival game store were to charge game publishers a lower commission than Valve’s high 30% fee, the distributor would not gain more sales because the game publishers could not charge a lower price in its store. Game publishers and consumers suffer because this rule keeps Valve’s high 30% commission from being subject to competitive pressure.
This Price Parity Provision is one of the reasons why Valve has been able to continue to charge an inflated 30% commission for many years, even as that commission is plainly above the levels that would prevail in a competitive market. Competition would normally force such an inflated commission to come down to competitive levels—but Valve’s restraints prevent those competitive forces from operating as they would in a free market.
Because of Valve’s restraint, publishers cannot utilize alternative distributors to avoid the 30% tax that Valve has set for the market. Thus, they reluctantly market their games primarily through the dominant Steam Store where Valve takes its 30% fee. While several distributors have tried to compete with Valve by charging lower commissions on Steam Keys, those efforts have largely failed to make a dent in the Steam Store’s market share because publishers using those distributors had to charge the same inflated prices they set on the Steam Store.
Moreover, even if a game publisher wanted to scale up its use of Steam Keys to promote competition, Valve has made it clear that it would shut down such efforts. When Valve recognizes that a game publisher is selling a significant volume of Steam Keys relative to its Steam Store sales, Valve can, at its own discretion, threaten the game publisher and refuse to provide more Steam Keys. Thus, Valve uses the Steam Key program as another tool to ensure that the vast majority of sales take place on the Steam Store, where Valve gets its 30% commission on nearly every sale.
So if you want to sell steam keys, you need to offer a similar deal on steam as you would wherever you’re selling those steam keys. This doesn’t apply to other storefronts like GOG, Epic, the Ubisoft store, the EA store or the Windows store, this is only about selling steam keys. So if you want to avoid giving Valve a cut of the sale while still using their platform to distribute your game, Valve is going to get upset and take action to prevent you from doing that.
There is also a section about
Price Veto Provision. Valve also requires game publishers to agree to give Valve veto power over their pricing in the Steam Store and across the market generally (the “Price Veto Provision”). Valve selectively enforces this provision to review pricing by game publishers on PC Desktop Games that have nothing to do with the Steam Gaming Platform at all. Through this conduct, prices set in the Steam Store serve as a benchmark that leads to inflated prices for virtually all PC Desktop Games.
which I think was the focus of a different lawsuit that mostly talked about a Most Favored Nation clause. This one is a little more complicated, but this lawsuit ended up getting dismissed. I’m not even close to being a lawyer so I don’t know why exactly, but this video seems to make a pretty good argument for why this isn’t a good legal argument. To summarize: there isn’t actually any proof that this kind of clause is actually anti-competitive and violates anti-trust laws. There’s also no telling whether or not other storefronts have similar conditions in place, because apparently these kind of Most Favored Nation clauses are fairly standard in some industries.
Also being realistic if Valve were to drop their cut to 20% game prices wouldn’t change, the publishers would just pocket the difference, as we have seen with Epic.
You can’t point to current publisher behavior on EGS, because their behavior at present is influenced by Valve’s price policy (called the “Platform Most Favored Nation” or “PMFN” clause in the court filing) which is the foundation of the anti-competitive case against Valve.
Looking at your other comment, I can say that Ubisoft tried ditching steam, but their prices didn’t really change even though they were paying a lower commission to epic than they would have to valve. So they would have had the ability change their prices to whatever they wanted on the epic store without fear of valve vetoing the price, because those games weren’t being sold on steam.
Steam clearly wins on features, the only metric to beat them on is price. Epic is trying to do so, but publishers are not actually lowering the cost on their platform because of Valve’s policies—policies which are only effective because a publisher cannot afford to be delisted from Steam due its large market share.
Is there any actual proof of this? Epic is well known for giving games away for free, the best price customers can hope for. Yet they still can’t seem to retain a loyal customer base. Maybe the price isn’t the most important factor for a digital distribution platform.
I have been in locker room conversations enough to know what goes on in both boys and girls sides, because I am a privacy advocate (I write guides) and people find it easy to trust me, and know their secrets will never leak out. Taboo topics are a massive part of it. Being a fuckboy/hoe is often discussed. Dark humour and alcohol is often there. There are plenty things that go on, that never come out. And both sides do it.
Taboo topics are always spicy and welcome when the public morality filter/mask is worn off in a private setting. Humans are evolved animals and the primal instinct desires sometimes want us to get dirty, messy and perverted. Practically nobody is an exception to this.
Again, do you want it to be normal that some people get objectified? Do you think it’s good that sometimes you go on a rant about some perceived negative quality other people have? You could try actually talking to the people you’re gossiping about, give them some kind of feedback if their behavior is anti-social. But instead, you’re here defending group chats where people share (fake) nude photos of their (underage) classmates.
You also haven’t shown any real evidence that feminism is behind any of the problems you see in the world. Don’t you believe in the pareto principle? Do you think it might be possible that all the negative, vitriolic things you see (that you assign to all of women and feminism) comes from a small minority of people? And that, just maybe, those people don’t even have to be part of the feminist movement at all?
And I really don’t care about your favorite youtubers, I just think you shouldn’t listen so much to just one source. Especially when all they do is react to the latest social media outrage. But specifically for Fresh and Fit: that video you linked came out at the beginning of June, and the demonetization happened in mid August.
I don’t want to debate the finer points of what makes a fascist. Maybe just take a minute and do some self-reflection as to why so many people see the things you write and instantly think “this belongs in the red-pill, right wing section of the internet.”
Should I start to assume when someone says they are a feminist, they are NOT a feminist? This line of logic does not fall in very well with the act of consenting. If someone says they are a feminist, they ARE a feminist. No debate. A woman says she is a feminist, she IS one. Counter her points about female privilege and how good it feels.
Nowhere does she say she’s a feminist. She’s telling a story about being a model in California. Feminism isn’t just being a woman. Google “feminist pretty privilege” and the top reddit post you find is way more compelling for what a feminist would say about “pretty privilege” than a random tiktoker your favorite youtubers managed to find.
I am not asking about what someone is saying. Does the preaching get practiced in real world? It is all that matters.
Why are men told to approach women and get rejected, but never women told by feminists to be “bold” and “brave” and approach and get rejected?
You very literally were asking about what people are saying. You asked “why don’t women get told to talk to guys?” and the answer is “they do.”
Why am I assuming a body positive feminist is a body positive feminist? What is this kind of argumentation? An apple is not an orange, and a banana is not a papaya.
At no point in the video does anyone even claim the woman was a body-positive feminist. Your favorite youtubers start talking about body-positivity as if she was, but she never claimed to be one and we never get to see any kind of evidence that she actually is.
Men are told not to approach. Men are obeying feminist agenda. Young feminists are sad and pissed the dating market is Sahara desert. Men chose to adapt and become risk averse in the same ways women neurobiologically have behaved in all of human history. Laws favour women and ignore men. Feminists favour women and ignore men (not their responsibility). Society favours sympathising with women to earn brownie points with other women. Nobody helps men, so men help themselves.
Maybe watch the podcast.
Again, I watched the part labeled “What is causing the rise in sexless men?” and the expert didn’t say anything at all about feminism. The podcast host brings it up briefly as a possibility, but then they move on to another topic. They aren’t talking about feminism. You’re bringing it up like it’s the most natural thing in the world, but to do that you need to make a lot of assumptions that aren’t supported by these things you’re linking. I’d tell you to watch some of these videos again, but I’m sure you’d just inject your own narrative into them again.
Your argumentation is based on a false premise that I indirectly love rape fantasies and locker room talk.
You’re the one that keeps bringing it up. “Locker room talk” has become a euphemism for sexualizing and objectifying women. I asked if you meant private conversations between boys, but the one real world example you brought up of locker room talk was a group chat where a bunch of teens were sharing photos of their classmates. If you want to be talking about private, girl-free conversations, tell me. Otherwise I’ll keep assuming you think the kinds of things described in the “locker room bois” story should be normal and acceptable.
Women objectify men in girl locker rooms more than men could ever objectify women in boys locker rooms,
I’ve never heard of a girls’ only chat where they shared fake nude photos of guys in there class, and yet here’s a story from last week of your “boys locker room chat” that ends with a someone killing themself.
because objectification of women is very normalised in porn
You’d think this right here would be enough of a reason to understand why the feminism movement exists, but oh well.
Taboo factor is the core tenet of what entices people towards BDSM, gore, zoophilia, pedophilia and other acts of depravity. The more exclusive something is, the more exciting and demanded it secretly is. These locker room talks provide space for taboo discussions more than anything else.
You’d think there’d be a much larger audience for the truly taboo subjects, like cannibalism and cutting your arm off with a rusty pocket knife. The kind of things everyone knows you obviously shouldn’t be doing. They definitely exist, but they’re a very small group considering how “exciting and demanded” it should be based on your logic.
They are what I consider to be the most balanced, sensible, non-controversial and non-reactionary centrist social commentators on YouTube. That is the consensus.
Where are you getting this consensus from? One of the videos you sent me was literally all about how one of the guys said something controversial on twitter, and all they do is react to other people’s content. Even if you use the more relevant definition of reactionary, they seem like they’d be pretty opposed to feminism making any real ground and actually changing the way they life their lives.
They are the reason why Pearl and Fresh&Fit, giant redpillers close to Tate/Sneako, got demonetised.
I’m pretty sure JustPearlyThings got demonetized for her pro-hitler song, not even Fresh&Fit know for sure why they got demonitized but I get the feeling it wasn’t because of Aba N Preach. I just don’t think the 0.5-2 million views they get per video is enough clout to get a video demonetized.
You are labeling and cancelling them without knowing about them
What does it even meant to cancel them? I’m absolutely labeling them, but do you think I have the power to make them stop producing new content? Or is canceling something just the same as not liking something?
https://www.tacobell.com/food/burritos/beefy-5-layer-burrito
Looks like the actual price is $3.79