Putin’s government was warned weeks in advance and dropped the ball badly. Now they need to turn bad press into useful press by placing blame on Ukraine so Russia stays focused on that war. I sincerely doubt they have the military power available to start meaningful reprisals against Islamic State in Afghanistan.
Swen describes how relieved his team was that they weren’t going to be doing more Baldur’s Gate, and even in BG3 development they talked about the difficulties of making 5E DnD work in a video game past 12th level. Larian clearly gave all they had for 6 years of development and they didn’t chop it into DLC the way a lot of studios would have. In my mind it’s like BG3 launched in “Game of the Year Complete Edition” with all DLC included.
Part of what made BG3 special was how excited the team was about working on it. I’m actually happy to hear they aren’t going to try and force more content. I’m looking forward to seeing what they make with the ideas they’re excited about next.
Swen is so awesome. Just wants to make quality games and treat people well.
Slava Ukraini brother/sister :)
I’m worried. It sounds like there is potential here for a lot of MAGA followers to end up losing a lot of money. Yes, they bear responsibility for being so blindly supportive, but if they make themselves destitute it won’t be just their problem. Poor people suffer, their innocent kids suffer, poverty drives crime, violence and extremism… And let’s face it, the states where this would hit hardest aren’t exactly known for their strong social safety nets.
Fair enough. So not actually fraud so much as people making…let’s call it “questionable” decisions to maintain civility.
“The order came as Trump is trying to avoid paying the $454 million judgment against him in that trial, in part by arguing that it is “impossible” for him to get an appeal bond.”
You know what happens to regular people when they can’t make court-ordered payments? They lose their stuff. Here’s hoping that Donny has so badly abused the privileges of the club he’s in that he’s getting kicked out and facing judgment like any of the rest of us would. I guess we’ll see if any of the other billionaires are willing to bet 500+ million that Trump is still “winning”.
To the best of my knowledge Canada has been a steadfast ally to the Ukrainians. In February they announced additional support in 2024, including just over 3 billion in military and economic assistance among many other smaller initiatives. This story also says Canada is willing to participate in an ammunition bulk-buy being quarterbacked by the Czechs that may see about 800,000 artillery rounds sourced and delivered to Ukraine.
Canada paused military shipments to Israel on Jan. 8th, has stopped for realsies now apparently, and resumed UNRWA funding before any payments were missed. On Feb. 14th the Prime Ministers of Canada, Australia, and New Zealand issued a joint statement calling any Rafah offensive “catastrophic” and calling for the creation of a Palestinian state alongside Israel. My guess is evidence of war crimes and potentially genocide is so undeniable that countries are scrambling to distance themselves from what will be years of condemnation by the ICJ and other regulatory/watchdog institutions.
I’m Canadian, and for months I’ve been posting about how my country has given Israel too much support given the evidence of long-standing apartheid and other human rights violations (and war crimes since Oct. 7th). My first post on Lemmy was actually about how ashamed I was that Western countries like Canada were being so silent about the Gazan crisis. Hopefully measures like stopping sales and promoting a two-state solution are first steps on the road to stopping the suffering of the Palestinians and making up for those months of inaction or even unethical support.
If Truth Social is under-performing and the stock is being inflated as a bet on the coming election, isn’t this just the latest version of “the value is so much higher than people think” that got Trump in trouble in NY in the first place? I wonder if any financial companies are willing to bet on Truth Social to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars (in the next few days no less), especially given that the article states Trump may just dump the stocks for what he can get ASAP in Sept/Oct.
It’s going to be interesting if, come election time in November, many MAGA supporters end up holding Truth Social stocks that are worth small fractions of what they are buying them for now.
At least on my Firefox browser that worked. You rock!
Meanwhile Alabama makes 450 million a year off of “modern slavery” by punishing convicts if they don’t work for, in some cases, 2 dollars a day. At least bathroom users can rejoice that the person they can’t see in the stall next to them has state-approved genitalia. Also schools won’t have to worry about planning curriculum with nuance or historical accuracy.
Thank you for letting me know, appreciate it :)
My takeaway from the the article is basically:
Here’s hoping in 2028 the bar is higher for serious candidates than “The candidate probably won’t be allowed to be as terrible as they say they’ll be.”
Edit: Would anyone be willing to tell me how to get a full line of space in between the end of a bulleted list and a new paragraph (which I’m missing in this post)? I spent some time looking and tried double space, double enter, , etc and nothing I looked up worked. Thanks in advance for saving me from my own ignorance. Thank you Lemmy folks for your help!
Reddit doesn’t function like a real business (i.e. most of the work is unpaid volunteers, users and especially mods). There’s no genuine site-wide code of ethics beyond what will actually get them criminal charges. The written rules don’t matter - many moderators are unpaid bullies who permaban if their feelings are hurt and ignore questionable content they agree with. That system of banning users based on opinion kills discussion of “unapproved” views and sorts people into forums where their favorite opinions (and often outright hatreds) are popular. Loathe a particular race/gender/political ideology etc? Just find a subreddit where the mods agree and you’ll be fine saying some truly terrible stuff. Read the bloodthirsty posts on r/worldnews and tell me if the site-wide rules on not promoting violence or racism apply. For these reasons and more I don’t think anyone should be buying into their IPO because they aren’t a reliable business.
I don’t know if Lemmy is different because I’ve been here for less than a month, but at least here it feels like you can have different opinions and the worst that happens is you eat downvotes. Plus a lot of the really unethical takes are usually checked pretty hard in my (limited) experience by the users, which doesn’t happen when the only other voices are basically guaranteed to agree with you (a la most of Reddit).
The rest of this is just my Reddit survivor tale so if you don’t care stop here. I got invited to the IPO on the same week I got a 3-day site-wide ban after appealing a subreddit permaban for a fairly popular comment that the US should stop funding Israel and give the money to Ukraine (on a post about how the US is having trouble finding money for Ukraine). In those words, no hate speech or racism etc. When I asked why I was banned I got a 4-word insult as the only communication back. I’m not usually a conspiracy theorist, but it sure felt like I was being deliberately censored/punished for high-ish profile “dangerous” anti-Israeli opinion. May not be the case, but it was my first site-wide ban ever for a comment that broke no written rules.
My Reddit account is 13 years old and in 2023 I think I made about 100k karma, primarily with comments about history, education, and in one case a post about how awesome sperm whales are. My experience mirrors what I’ve read happens to others enough that Reddit has lost my participation (I’ve only posted 2x in the last 3 months, down from a few times daily) and my faith. I only go back to check on specialist communities (video game tips etc) and almost never participate anymore. Frankly I hope it either changes to allow for discussion or dies.
I’ll edit to “paying her (illegally) to lie about it.”
“Cleaned with vinegar” - that’s going to be a spicy meatball for the next user if they don’t thoroughly rinse it.
Disclaimer: I don’t have a degree in economics. I read your post and I think I have countering points to make, but if you can rebut my points below specifically I’ll try to listen. (Also just want you to know I’m not the one who down-voted you since you seem to be arguing in good faith and I’m all about that. Sometimes I’m wrong.)
You talk about making things more cheaply and that resulting in a cheaper product. If companies agree to all charge the maximum they can get away with, it kills industry price competition (a foundational necessity of functional capitalism) and renders price elasticity a falsehood. If Coke and Pepsi both charge 1.50 for a can of cola, it doesn’t matter if increased productivity means Coke can make a can for 20 cents instead of 30 cents - the savings are just converted into extra profit. You can see this in record profits for many sectors as productivity has increased - the savings of needing fewer people to do the same work isn’t passed on to customers. As proof, here’s an article about how much more things cost today than in the 1970’s (adjusted for inflation). Yet we know that people are over 3x as productive per person over the same period, so clearly companies are not passing along savings in the form of cheaper goods. I know more than productivity affects price, but those factors would have to be overwhelmingly more costly to justify the increase and I don’t think things like shipping are that much more expensive.
Inelastic demand for necessary products like fuel, utilities, food, health care, etc also means that in many industries increased productivity does not need to translate to savings. Pharmaceutical companies, either as an industry of multiple providers or where they hold exclusive patents, will raise prices of products to whatever they can get away with because people will either pay or die. So again cheaper products and competition is a myth.
Speaking of getting fewer people to do the same work, companies lay off people all the time when individual productivity or automation goes up. You talk about employing 1/5th the Bobcat workers and net lost 4 workers being forced to find other work. This may make economic sense but it’s terrible societal sense. It results in financial insecurity and homelessness among educated, capable people with all the associated national problems like mental health, crime, drug addiction, etc.
As US economics function now, companies do not pass along the value of increased productivity to their customers in savings, nor to their employees in increased wages, shorter work weeks, or stable employment (re: layoffs). Instead they maintain or raise prices depending on what they can get away with and employ as few people as possible to maximize profit. This has the societal consequences we’re seeing now, such as in OP’s article.
I don’t know - it’s possible as I’ve heard of Islamic State being linked to several nations. However, OP’s article mentions Afghanistan specifically:
“A U.S. intelligence official told The Associated Press that U.S. intelligence agencies had learned the group’s branch in Afghanistan was planning an attack in Moscow and shared the information with Russian officials.”