I had a chance to play for a couple hours this morning, and I’m impressed so far! It’s a metroidvania game, but with a souls-like bonfire/estus flask/lose experience on death and try to recover it mechanic. Movement and combat feel fluid, and deflecting attacks feels great. The combat system seems simple right now, but I have barely unlocked any of the systems in the game and it’s a metroidvania so I know the complexity will only grow.

The world is beautiful and has a complex history that I want to learn more about, although the dialog is a little bit jointed, probably due to localization issues. There are definitely some aspects of body horror to the game, with humans Apemen from the Big Blue Planet being used as livestock in a creepy, gory, ritualistic fashion in the first level. It’s definitely not a horror game, though-- the protagonist is powerful and can fight back against enemies without fear of running out of resources, although combat is definitely unforgiving.

I can tentatively recommend it right now, although I haven’t played it enough to give it a full review yet. I haven’t played it on my steam deck yet, but I’ll give it a shot tonight and give my thoughts over on the steamdeck community

I ended up grabbing this, I’ll come back soon and let y’all know what I think. Gonna mostly play on Steam deck

Maybe Cory Doctorow?

There was a good Royalist? I’m guessing you mean Rene, because it sure wasn’t Gary the Cryptofascist or Measurehead or the Racist Lorry Driver. Imo the only thing that stopped Rene from becoming someone like Dros were his relationships with Gaston and Evrart. If he had been “alone” the way Dros was then the investigation may have gone quite differently

Man, I don’t know what you think we’re talking about, but I’m talking about DoorDash and DoorDash drivers in reality as it is today. I do not own DoorDash, so you are not subsidizing my business. The service offered is just bringing your food to your door, there isn’t really any “good” service that can be used to justify a tip or vice versa. If people decide that the cost of a DoorDash delivery plus a tip is too much, they won’t close the app and go get their food themselves–they will just not tip like OP did and like you do and they will both receive a message like the one above. If you want to have your order picked up quickly, you have to place a winning bid.

THAT is what capitalism is–not some idealized pursuit of profit that refuses to exploit its workers; but a house of cards built out of dozens of competing contradictions, full of people hoping to leave someone else holding the bag when it all comes crashing down. I recommend reading Contradiction 7 of Seventeen Contradictions and The End of Capitalism, “The Contradictory Unity of Production and realisation”. It’s all about how capitalists are fighting the competing contradictions of wanting to sell their goods for as much as possible while paying their laborers as little as possible, and what the broader social impacts of that may be.

Why is it my responsibility to ensure they’re paid fairly by me directly?

Because the price you pay for a service is a reflection of the relationship you have with the person providing that service, and to believe otherwise is something known as commodity fetishism

"What is, in fact, a social relation between people (between capitalists and exploited laborers) instead assumes “the fantastic form of a relation between things.”

We are defined both individually and societally by the relationships that we form with other people.

If you can’t pay your workers fairly, why does your business deserve to exist?

It does not deserve to exist. However, it does exist, drivers drive for them and are not paid enough for their labor, and you continue to use it despite all of that. I’ll ask again: why don’t you personally be the change you want to see in the world and pay them more now?

Ok, call your extra payment whatever name you want, and get the ball rolling on legislating new regulations to ensure fair pay. They deserve to get paid more, and when/if those regulations go through the drivers will have a better future.

That didn’t answer the question, though. We both agree that drivers deserve to get paid more, so why not open up your wallet and start paying them more now? Why wait months or years for legislation to go through to force you to pay more, when the power to make sure your driver is paid well is sitting in the palm of your hand today? Your individual act of tipping or not tipping will do nothing to address the system at large, but it will do everything to ensure your driver driver gets paid fairly for the labor they perform while they serve you.

Halfway through the linked post, when he talks about if you like twilight as a man

Aw man, I forgot about his random homophobia :(

Here’s a picture of Ronald Reagan meeting with Afghan mujahideen in the White House in 1983

I don’t think “physical force” is a necesarry component of violence. Take, for example, domestic violence. The US DOJ gives these criteria for if an action is DV or not:

Domestic violence is a pattern of abusive behavior in any relationship that is used by one partner to gain or maintain power and control over another intimate partner. Domestic violence can be physical, sexual, emotional, economic, psychological, or technological actions or threats of actions or other patterns of coercive behavior that influence another person within an intimate partner relationship. This includes any behaviors that intimidate, manipulate, humiliate, isolate, frighten, terrorize, coerce, threaten, blame, hurt, injure, or wound someone.

I think a more apt definition of violence would be “coercive behavior”

The funny thing is, deciding which memes are political and which memes are not political is itself a political decision

You just can’t escape it

I have no idea what this says but based on length and wall-of-text-ness, I’m willing to bet it’s the navy seal copypasta

For this logic to be consistent you would have to pronounce JPEG as “jayfeg”