You don’t have to speculate, my dude.

I’m saying go look up ANY product made by co-ops or unions… whether it’s clothing like Thorogood Boots, or even fucking cheese and dairy makers like Tillamook, unions and employee-owned type outfits just literally make better products.

Actually, traditionally unions have pretty much universally resulted in better quality products. Union made products usually are crafted by well-paid artisans who apprentice under masters of said craft.

See publicly traded companies only care about short term gains and maximum profit margin. They squeeze from every angle until everything sucks. Fire expensive experts with experience, outsource everything to the cheapest places, lower the quality of the materials, increase the price, milk every IP.

On the other side, union workers want to keep their jobs, and the best way to do that is to make sure people like their products.

They are not “perfect,” but they care about more than profit margins and short term gains.

The same way Digimon, Monster Hunter monsters, and every other unique IP looks nothing like Pokemon. Make completely original designs that don’t look like fan art or knock offs of another artist’s specific trademark style.

Let me be clear :

Copyright law as it stands right now is stupid, and should only benefit individuals from large companies looking to use their resources to steal from them without compensation.

I’m just talking about not letting junk companies pretend they made a game for your favorite IP in a way that lets them trick less-informed people.

It seems most of the actual copyright law benefits big companies as it is interpreted now… which is kind of the opposite of how it originally was intended.

I think that’s a pretty generous interpretation.

It’s like you are trying to pretend that character does not look like a Pokemon because their appearance WAS technically different… even though it uses identical parts from several actual characters from the IP.

So it should be counted as non-infringing because they simply re-arranged / mixed and matched those character parts like they were a Mr. Potato-head-esque / ransom note magazine assembly / amalgamation of interchangeable similar puzzle pieces?

And I just grabbed one of the first results from when you search Pokemon Palworld similarities… I’m not familiar enough with every single one to find a more egregious example, but again - let’s be honest. This is the IP equivalent of saying “I’m not touching you” while a sibling holds their finger right next to your eye as if to poke it.

I’m a little torn on this.

On the one hand, let’s be real - clearly PalWorld takes more than a little “inspiration” on a bunch of different Pokemon IP. The illustrations, modeling, and just visual style overall matches in many ways almost perfectly for many of the creatures. They are like off-brand versions of Pokemon with the exact same eyes, mouth types, etc. in many cases as if they were illustrated by Ken Sugimori himself.

Additionally, the game involves using handheld ball devices thrown at wild world-roaming creatures you capture after cutting down their health by some amount to increase the catch percentage and different “grade” balls have increased chance for capture.

There is also a nefarious organization competing with you for capturing these wild creatures like Team Rocket.

But on the OTHER hand, the leveling up, breeding, base-building, the various ability tech-trees, item crafting, and just overall engine complexity is VASTLY superior to what appears to now be an almost EMBARRASSINGLY behind set of game design mechanics in the actual Pokemon games… it’s sort of a Saints Row vs GTA IV situation here where they were an obvious copy off, but improved in enough ways that ended up being a fun game in itself.

Copying off exact art asset styles is one thing you shouldn’t do… but taking Nintendo’s gameplay ideas and expanding upon them vastly and being told to remove said mechanics as if they stole code is asinine and sets a bad precedent.

Every time there’s been a popular game, there are a thousand copies off them that twist and evolve those mechanics until something else comes along.

Nintendo came along with platformers after Pitfall on Atari. Sonic copied 2D platforming basics from Mario like running to the right and jumping on enemies but changed so much. Final Fantasy copied off Dragon Quest, which itself was a digital idea based off of Dungeons & Dragons. Doom to games like GoldenEye to Halo to Call of Duty to PUBG to Fortnite to APEX Legends…

This feels like taking advantage of grey area in the realm of visual IP similarity to shut down someone making their gameplay design mechanics look antiquated by comparison.

Really embarrassing for Nintendo to be doing this, when clearly what Nintendo should be doing is doing like what Fortnite did when APEX came along and added location / enemy / weapon call outs and just STEALING the mechanics they weren’t clever enough to think of on their own and implement better versions in their own games… but clearly they’d just rather have a monopoly and continue lackluster work.

Anyone know that scene in the 2012 movie Killer Joe where McConaughey forces Gina Gershon to… well… anyone else get a similar thought imagining how Trump is going to be with anyone terrified of him?

These cowards think kissing the proverbial ring will appease the guy… but guaranteed no matter what the dude is going to be sadistic and do what he wants regardless.

Dave is awesome. Great dude.

And Biden pardoning said “kids for cash” folks when they are actually held to account.

Already lost interest in Assassin’s Creed after they abandoned the Desmond timeline…

Played a tiny bit of the Black Flag one for the fun shanty stuff but that’s been it for me now for probably a decade… so all this has done has lowered my already completely evaporated interest of “apathy” down now to “actively avoid as if it were a virus.”

IEP is necessary for kids with special needs.

It provides clear and protected guidelines which allow a kid with physical disabilities like being born missing 8 fingers to be allowed something like a tablet to write out essays through dictation rather than be forced to try keep up with children without such challenges in writing said essays with pen and paper when their ability to come up with an answer has nothing to do with their ability to wiggle a writing instrument upon the surface of card stock.

Not good enough. Any OTA updates your TV can get over the web will eventually be trying to circumvent your IP blacklists to shove in any ad-riddled garbage they can.

Literally just blacklist your TV’s MAC address, and use a dedicated set top box of some kind to avoid this shit. My current choice is my NVIDIA Shield Pro 2019, which I installed a 3rd party WOLF launcher (there’s also F-Launcher) and turned off auto-updates so I could avoid NVIDIA and Google doing the same.

At some point, I will probably need to switch to a NUC or other HTPC with some flavor of Linux on it, as eventually the Shield may succumb to this shit as well.

The Dems began bleeding the working class after Carter.

The problem is that - outside of Obama in 2008 (who campaigned as left of Clinton), and Sanders in 2016 and 2020 - there have been almost ZERO efforts to court the increasingly jaded and apathetic working class voters who have to work harder and harder every cycle only to be disappointed by the candidate they believed in not following through with decreasingly attractive policy proposals.

Again, she wasn’t TERRIBLE, and no matter how disconnected she was, she would have been > than 🍊… but her team had her trotting out LIZ CHENEY over allowing a Palestinian to speak on stage at the DNC.

This idea that there was NOTHING she could have done to win over the small percentage of apathetic voters to push her over the edge is simply not true.

The enthusiasm from the Democratic base disappeared shortly after the campaign backed off the sort of initial good decisions they started off with (like choosing Walz and letting him call Rs weird).

…And then the overpaid completely disconnected party consultants just kept pushing her to move all the way to the right as much as she possibly could under the delusion that THIS time (like Clinton tried) we could get the R cultists to come out and vote for her… I mean they had a literal billionaire Mark Cuban excited for their candidacy.

Excellent summary, but I think folks were sad because a bunch of us had tuned in hoping to see :

That first punch that landed on Paul’s face made him stop dancing around like an idiot… but yeah after 2 rounds it became just a war of attrition, where Tyson’s knees (which apparently were in a brace outside of the fight itself) just couldn’t hold up and let him close the gap and deliver any of his admittedly still-fierce punches.

All right dude. Ya missed my point. I’m not saying Harris didn’t support anything nor did I say Trump was good or support any of his bullshit. I’m just saying - a campaign where you put Liz fucking Cheney on stage with you during the 100 or so days you had to scramble an attractive message to activate people is fucking stupid centrist corporate DNC bullshit that fucked what initially looked like it could be a winning campaign into the fucking ground.

“We have a concrete asterisk riddled corporation-friendly plan that I’m talking to you about with Liz Cheney right now for helping… that doesn’t involve anything approaching a green new deal, universal healthcare, or clawing back the massive wealth inequality that continues to worsen and has not improved since the 1970s.”

FTFY…

But seriously, what is needed has been painfully clear not just for at least the last 4 presidential elections, but for DECADES. MASSIVE changes that are -of course - completely unfeasible (politically) but nonetheless necessary to scream about from the bully pulpit for the chance to make voters believe and push for such changes.

Trump lies but he PREACHES (granted like it’s some kinda fucked up GOSPEL to his cult of followers)… and this era of “we go high they go low” as if voters care about anything but victories… and “we won’t lie to you with unrealistic promises” as an excuse not to even give aspirational speeches like JFK once used to do with his (at the time) seemingly crazy speeches about having a person walk upon the surface of the moon…

It just is not a recipe for success. The corporate hacks running the DNC need to be FORCED out, as they don’t actually care that we keep losing. They are in revolving doors that are no different from those of Joe Manchin, Kristen Sinema, or ALL the other Rs.

🦆… 🗞️💥

There are no safe havens for multiple reasons… there are places you can probably guess will be less bad… but there are potential worse consequences for each. For example :

• US military power already far exceeds that of every other country on Earth. It is not post WWI 🇩🇪 rearming after licking its wounds. If you go somewhere that “resists,” there is no guarantee you won’t fall under its 🎯
• COVID has seemed to have a lasting effect EVERYWHERE in the world. Look how many other countries have now elected far right wing officials. In 🇩🇪, the non-right coalition government has just collapsed.
• as an immigrant in any of those countries with newly elected right-wing anti-immigrant governments, you will be the first they punish for any perceived failures of said governments to improve their existing citizenry’s lives.

In truth, despite things like inflation getting “better” overall and other economic indicators seeming to point to improvement, an overwhelming number of constituents who participate in voting across the world have felt pain from price increases without sufficient wage increases to offset that pain… and without action being taken that “feels” like it improves people’s material conditions, they are further ripened for the 🐂-💩 scapegoating of demagogues who gladly lie to pretend they will make their lives better… so everywhere they are being elected.

It’s not fair, but history shows us this is what happens…

My favorite way to explain this to normies is with a weird thing that Denny’s breakfast joint did years ago…

For those I don’t know, by the way, Denny’s is a US crappy breakfast joint that sells two cent pancake breakfasts for five bucks.

Every year Danny’s used to have a “free breakfast” day… Where you could come in and they would give you a free breakfast.

Now again, this breakfast is crappy, but it’s completely free. And as a result of this, Denny’s all over the US have always had lines out the door of people coming there to get that crappy free breakfast.

Do you know why the line was around the corner?

Because people like simple good things like a free meal, no strings attached or special actions needed.

Now ask yourself this :

Would Denny’s have near as many people show up if they offered a means-tested 70% off reusable coupon that actually had unlimited uses and ultimately saved you more?

Or a mail-in rebate that only worked during a certain day of the week, or if they said “hey Denny’s customer! you better come to Denny’s on Tuesday because they’re going to otherwise get rid of free breakfast day later this year.”

The answer is no.

It’s stupid and sucks and is counterintuitive and even if the coupon had infinite uses, less people show up than would just for “free breakfast.”

People are dumb and their needs should be directly and fully resolved, not simply just gestured toward or only marginally addressed.

And so - just like if you tell them “you’re gonna lose the access to bodily autonomy” or “the ACA” or anything else… People don’t show up… At least not enough of them will.

See, generally no one cares when you tell them they’re going to lose something… they show up when you OFFER them something simple and that ACTUALLY improves their lives in a measurable material tangible easily-connected straight-line way.

Anyone posting here keeps up with the news and is well aware of every single policy proposal that each party has and their records…

…BUT 10 GODDAMN MILLION LESS PEOPLE VOTED this time and - as stupid as they are - it wasn’t third-party voters’ fault (because even if every 3rd party vote auto-went to Harris it wouldn’t have been enough for her to win) and the 🍊 didn’t get more votes than he did last time.

Yes, racism, sexism, etc. plays a role but inflation outpaced wage growth and there are people who remember getting a COVID check when Trump was president and the check stopped when Biden was president.

These people are unreachable with platitudes and telling them that “things are better” when they seem to not be able to afford as much, and they haven’t gotten a raise that even comes close to making up the difference.

It doesn’t matter who is actually at fault - they just know who is in charge when it was hurting… and unless you tell them, “I’m not like the person there now and I am going to fix it” and you make them believe you and you are fully and simply and directly addressing their concerns immediately - Not with a “70% off Denny’s coupon,” but with “free breakfast” kind of simple policies (even if you just lie to them like 🍊 does so openly)… then they will simply (and unfairly) vote for whoever is not “currently in charge” in their minds.