American Politics

[ninjabot]

Hmmm, but isn't this issue about how the parent company or whatever both promotes and develops DnD products along with how it bonds to the DnD community? As you say, anyone can play how they want otherwise.

Yes it is. I just think that he's using the financial problems as a scapegoat for his real problem with the content.

yeah, I don't care for guns in high fantasy.

You're no fun.

I feel like you are trying to have it both ways there. If you have a book with a quest and art but then expect people to outright ignore it if they don't like the art? This is still a product people are buying, if the art sucks then it's reasonable for people to not buy it or otherwise engage with it if they don't like it. If it's free it's a different issue of course.

I'm saying that you CAN ignore the art, and most people DO. There are several aspects to it. It's okay not to like the art, but this isn't like a videogame where you can say "These people look dumb, I can't enjoy myself." You know how many times I tried to get into One Piece and failed because of the goofy ass designs? These different mediums interact with you optically, so an offensive aesthetic can destroy that media for you. I can't change the One Piece art into Bleach art or Naruto art so that it's fun to look at so I can get to enjoying the story.

I CAN do that for DnD though, cause it's in my head. That makes it a non-issue for me.

As for selling the product to other people, or as many people as possible... well, that's just good business. This reeks of people screaming about certain female video game characters not being slutty enough for them to enjoy their designs. If they don't like the art, they don't have to buy it, but it's... so little of what matters it just seems dumb.

 

[M3J]

Both. If we get better at handling poverty, less people will get mental health and drug issues.
If we get better at treating mental health and drug issues, less people will fall into poverty.

Even if you have a cheap flat, if you stop paying your bills because you are too depressed to open your mail, you are gonna end up homeless eventually.

Germany has a homelessness problem even tho government will pay for your flat + food if you apply for it. So even when the cost of housing is secured, people become homeless or stay homeless even tho they could theoretically take that option.

I am not saying that to downplay the cost of living crisis, but especially in america, drugs and mental health play a huge role.

If we help impoverished people be guaranteed shelter and food, then there might be less mental health issues and drug issues. If we guarantee UBI, there'd likely be less homelessness. Mental health just seems like a copout, like it is with gun violence.

But if you have money, you can afford someone to help pay the bills. If you have money, you'd likely have a house. Germans might be a different case, but in USA I see people become homeless due to various different circumstances unrelated to mental health and sometime drugs.


On an unrelated topic, I feel like if Harris was actually a leftist, then she could have won the election.

Also, the way Bernie is actually supporting Elon and RFK Jr. What a disappointment.

And, the United Healthcare CEO was murdered. Hopefully this scares other insurance CEOs into actually helping people instead of trying to cheat them out of money.

 

[kkck]

Yes it is. I just think that he's using the financial problems as a scapegoat for his real problem with the content.

You're no fun.

I'm saying that you CAN ignore the art, and most people DO. There are several aspects to it. It's okay not to like the art, but this isn't like a videogame where you can say "These people look dumb, I can't enjoy myself." You know how many times I tried to get into One Piece and failed because of the goofy ass designs? These different mediums interact with you optically, so an offensive aesthetic can destroy that media for you. I can't change the One Piece art into Bleach art or Naruto art so that it's fun to look at so I can get to enjoying the story.

I CAN do that for DnD though, cause it's in my head. That makes it a non-issue for me.

As for selling the product to other people, or as many people as possible... well, that's just good business. This reeks of people screaming about certain female video game characters not being slutty enough for them to enjoy their designs. If they don't like the art, they don't have to buy it, but it's... so little of what matters it just seems dumb.

The financial problems are intrinsically linked to what he doesn't like in the content. If he didn't like this but the company had cashed in then he'd had no leg or community to stand on.

I suppose for me it's either guns or bows but not both. Seeing someone with a gun presented as equal to someone with a bow makes no sense to me high fantasy setting or not.

I mean, your question here is basically "why aren't they paying or participating in something they don't like?". On my end I can be very nitpicky about how I spend my money. It's entirely common for me to refrain from buying something I like because some marginal part of the purchase is short of just right. For instance, I read GoT on my kindle and then I wanted to buy physical books but at the bookstore they only had the soft cover versions with TV show characters on them. I wasn't even set on hardcover but had no interest in the TV show characters being there. As much as I wanted the books I simply didn't entertain the possibility of buying the ones with TV show characters on them.

Well, yeah, but IF you actually sell anything. Which is clearly not what has happened.

 

[ninjabot]

I suppose for me it's either guns or bows but not both. Seeing someone with a gun presented as equal to someone with a bow makes no sense to me high fantasy setting or not.

I think people mistake high fantasy with medieval fantasy all too often, that's what I think. I think I've played enough Final Fantasy to know guns work perfectly fine in a world that consists of magic. So do robots and giant mechs.

I mean, your question here is basically "why aren't they paying or participating in something they don't like?"

More specifically, I'm saying "This one thing you're complaining about doesn't affect the gameplay, so if you enjoy the gameplay it's a non-issue." I don't care about the payment part because people will be playing DnD long after the company goes bankrupt thanks to it's reliance on imagination and little else. Fuck the actual corporation.

On my end I can be very nitpicky about how I spend my money. It's entirely common for me to refrain from buying something I like because some marginal part of the purchase is short of just right. For instance, I read GoT on my kindle and then I wanted to buy physical books but at the bookstore they only had the soft cover versions with TV show characters on them. I wasn't even set on hardcover but had no interest in the TV show characters being there. As much as I wanted the books I simply didn't entertain the possibility of buying the ones with TV show characters on them.

It's your money. Do what you want with it. Except giving it to a propagandist that's gonna use whatever media you're paying for to propagandize the people it's being sold to.

 

[kkck]

I think people mistake high fantasy with medieval fantasy all too often, that's what I think. I think I've played enough Final Fantasy to know guns work perfectly fine in a world that consists of magic. So do robots and giant mechs.



More specifically, I'm saying "This one thing you're complaining about doesn't affect the gameplay, so if you enjoy the gameplay it's a non-issue." I don't care about the payment part because people will be playing DnD long after the company goes bankrupt thanks to it's reliance on imagination and little else. Fuck the actual corporation.



It's your money. Do what you want with it. Except giving it to a propagandist that's gonna use whatever media you're paying for to propagandize the people it's being sold to.

I might be misremembering but I am almost sure the only FF game with bows at all was FFXII. I like the magitech angle but it's not exactly bow-rich.

Is this even an issue of this guy specifically successfully propagandizing anyone? As far as I can tell this is about changes to DnD by a corporation which were largely rejected by the community from the get go. This guy is at best capitalizing on this. To me the more important question here would be what went wrong with the corporate strategy to target these wider audiences and correct course to something that works.

 

[ninjabot]

I might be misremembering but I am almost sure the only FF game with bows at all was FFXII. I like the magitech angle but it's not exactly bow-rich.

Tactics as well.

Is this even an issue of this guy specifically successfully propagandizing anyone? As far as I can tell this is about changes to DnD by a corporation which were largely rejected by the community from the get go. This guy is at best capitalizing on this. To me the more important question here would be what went wrong with the corporate strategy to target these wider audiences and correct course to something that works.

Not this guy, Elon Musk. He's on a campaign to have Elon Musk buy WoTC to "save" DnD. Elon Musk is the problem here, but the guy isn't going into detail about the financial problems of WotC, he's putting more effort into complaining about the aesthetic not appealing to him. That's why I think he's only pretending to be naive: he knows that his complaints about the aesthetic leans into the right-wing anti-woke sphere and doesn't want to appear like he's one of those people, despite agreeing with them.

He released a follow-up video that doesn't make it seem much better, because in the video he responds to a gay black fan of his who explains to him, with citations to links, what's wrong with Elon, and his reponse is basically just "Yeah but he might fix things though. I gotta have faith!"

EDIT: Yeah, I'm looking at the things he wrote up on a livestream about what he hates about current DnD. He also currently dislikes Magic the Gathering. Same thing as DnD, he doesn't like the artstyle.

 

[M3J]

The way Fetterman went from a hero to a crappy person

 

[shionoro]

Biden could turn full anarchist and just pardon everybody lol.

 

[M3J]

he should at least pardon the drug offenders

 

[catagon87]

And, the United Healthcare CEO was murdered. Hopefully this scares other insurance CEOs into actually helping people instead of trying to cheat them out of money.

More likely scared them into hiring more security. Only reason this was possible is that United is so shit that it doesn’t even care enough to hire security for their executives.

 

[M3J]

More likely scared them into hiring more security. Only reason this was possible is that United is so shit that it doesn’t even care enough to hire security for their executives.

Yes, I figured that was the case, but it doesn't necessarily mean that'll stop shooters, especially if they're willing to sacrifice their lives.

United is actually so horrible that they continued the meeting despite losing the CEO, which really says a lot about the insurance industry.

 

[shionoro]

Generally, I do think that this will inspire other people to try killings like that. Managers can buy security, but that in itself would meant hat their life because way less pleasant because they can move less freely. Looking at the public almost unisono praising a killing like that is bound to have an effect on people who are not used to facing consequences.

 

[M3J]

I mean, one of the insurance companies walked back on their decision to stop covering anesthesia after certain amount of time has passed after the murder, soooo

 

[shionoro]

This month already had the CEO killing, Assad's fall and the uprising in georgia. Not even counting all the natural disasters. Things are getting pretty spicy.

 

[kkck]

RFK Jr to research unsupported link between vaccines and autism, Trump says

President-elect boosts discredited claims peddled by his health secretary pick Kennedy in NBC interview

www.theguardian.com

This ones gonna be fun. It was one thing to scream this from the fringes of the internet but now he gets to do it from a government position. Vaccine programs across the US and the planet are going to take a big hit here.

On a less negative note, I am somewhat cautiously optimistic that RFK could have a positive impact on US' obesity epidemic. Clearly what has been done over the past 30 years has been morbidly ineffective. I think he focuses too much on hype specific things at times (like specific additives or oils) but his comments on people eating less processed food and such simply make for a good starting point. TBH there's hardly any hope that people who are currently obese can get better on a massive scale but meaningful policy and cultural changes could spare the next generation from being overweight to begin with.

 

[shionoro]

RFK Jr to research unsupported link between vaccines and autism, Trump says

President-elect boosts discredited claims peddled by his health secretary pick Kennedy in NBC interview

www.theguardian.com

This ones gonna be fun. It was one thing to scream this from the fringes of the internet but now he gets to do it from a government position. Vaccine programs across the US and the planet are going to take a big hit here.

On a less negative note, I am somewhat cautiously optimistic that RFK could have a positive impact on US' obesity epidemic. Clearly what has been done over the past 30 years has been morbidly ineffective. I think he focuses too much on hype specific things at times (like specific additives or oils) but his comments on people eating less processed food and such simply make for a good starting point. TBH there's hardly any hope that people who are currently obese can get better on a massive scale but meaningful policy and cultural changes could spare the next generation from being overweight to begin with.

My question would be whether a member of a very pro industry government could restrict a powerful conglomerate such as the food industry.

 

[kkck]

My question would be whether a member of a very pro industry government could restrict a powerful conglomerate such as the food industry.

That's the big question.

Kennedy’s War on Corn Syrup Brings a Health Crusade to Trump Country

When Donald J. Trump said Robert F. Kennedy Jr. could “go wild” on health, he might not have expected his pick for health secretary doing battle against the president-elect’s own voters.

www.nytimes.com

Trump is potentially a threat to RFK in this regard, let alone that trump himself is obese and has a preference for fast food. That said, I do think the issue here is primarily cultural. People just grew accustomed to the convenience of already prepared food for a variety of reasons. I am also just not sure of what policy could have a chance at changing this, it's not like chugging 4000 calories a day is government mandated. Maybe restricting marketing or something like that. But in the end the more important factor is people wanting to eat healthier food, them buying healthier food and then knowing how to prepare healthy meals.

I think it's a bit of a mistake to focus on very specific additives or ingredients like HFCS or specific fats... If you regulate those then the food industry will simply reformulate to not include those ingredients. But the alternatives to those won't necessarily be better. It's like with vegan food.... You replace dairy or eggs with vegetable fats or emulsifiers/gums or powdered and concentrated protein and whatever else... It's just not true that this is overall healthier or better. There's a place for these things because lactose allergy or celiac disease exist of course but that's a separate issue. Even with vegan food that completely avoids the technology angle and uses natural ingredients you are still dealing with about the same number of calories as non vegan alternatives (with very minor exceptions).

A fad in the US was to replace HFCS with sugar cane water... And while strictly speaking this is less processed this is still sugar. This is still going to make people obese and diabetic (give or take some marginal health effects of specific sugars over time). And far more important than the source of the sugar is that people shouldn't be having as much sugar as they are having. And at least on my end I would still rather simply have sugar than artificial sweeteners.

 

[shionoro]

@kkck

Generally, I have come to accept that politics is unlikely to act unless there is already some buzz in the civil society for a topic. Both Demcrats and Republicans are not very likely to regulate the food industry, and the food industry uses quite a lot of money to keep people hooked.

My take is that most people want to eat healthy and be fit. Even those who claim otherwise.Which teen loves to be fat? I wouldnt know one.

The problem imo has 4 aspects.

a) The industry, just like the gambling industry, exploits all the ways it knows to keep people hooked on unhealthy food because it has a very high profit margin. Only regulation, both hard (forbid marketing to children) and soft (force nutri scores on every product) can really combat that. These measures do work, we know that in britain, a soft drink levy (making it more expensive for producers to put lots of sugar into a soft drink) helped to diminish the amount of sugar in products.
b) People tend to be increasingly stressed, out of time and poor. Even if they would like to be healthy, they have no money and time for sports or cooking. Of course there is an armada of foodies that will tell you that cooking healthy can be cheap, but we gotta be realistic about some overstressed working class guy who just wants to eat something that makes him stuffed before falling into bed. It is like with anything else, someone who is down on their luck, so poor or overstressed, is not going to invest as much into activity and maintaining themselves as someone who works 20 hours and still has enough money for the gym.
c) There are less opportunities for activity even for people who want to be active. Children have much less space. There is a lot of money invested into keeping people at the screen, there is not a lot of money invested into giving children and adults free open spaces and enough time to use them.
d) People often know very little about what eating healthy or healthy activity means. So even the people that put in effort can often be misled by the industry to buy products that are unhealthy.

To effectively combat obesity (and maybe we should rephrase that and say combat lethargy? It is a problem for thin peoples' health, too), I think especially problem c) could be something that people from civil society can improve.

If places that have lots of health problems could at least find groups that give free food and activity options to school children, that would already do a lot. Getting a child at least to 16 with a somewhat active body and a BMI under 25 makes it less likely for them to get into extreme health issues later on.

To give people a better overview, groups could create a nutri score on their own if government does not do it. If there would be some popular online insta channel that gives info about which products you can exchange with something else to save sugar and fat with a broad catalogue, a lot of people might opt for the healthier choices.

 

[kkck]

@kkck

Generally, I have come to accept that politics is unlikely to act unless there is already some buzz in the civil society for a topic. Both Demcrats and Republicans are not very likely to regulate the food industry, and the food industry uses quite a lot of money to keep people hooked.

My take is that most people want to eat healthy and be fit. Even those who claim otherwise.Which teen loves to be fat? I wouldnt know one.

The problem imo has 4 aspects.

a) The industry, just like the gambling industry, exploits all the ways it knows to keep people hooked on unhealthy food because it has a very high profit margin. Only regulation, both hard (forbid marketing to children) and soft (force nutri scores on every product) can really combat that. These measures do work, we know that in britain, a soft drink levy (making it more expensive for producers to put lots of sugar into a soft drink) helped to diminish the amount of sugar in products.
b) People tend to be increasingly stressed, out of time and poor. Even if they would like to be healthy, they have no money and time for sports or cooking. Of course there is an armada of foodies that will tell you that cooking healthy can be cheap, but we gotta be realistic about some overstressed working class guy who just wants to eat something that makes him stuffed before falling into bed. It is like with anything else, someone who is down on their luck, so poor or overstressed, is not going to invest as much into activity and maintaining themselves as someone who works 20 hours and still has enough money for the gym.
c) There are less opportunities for activity even for people who want to be active. Children have much less space. There is a lot of money invested into keeping people at the screen, there is not a lot of money invested into giving children and adults free open spaces and enough time to use them.
d) People often know very little about what eating healthy or healthy activity means. So even the people that put in effort can often be misled by the industry to buy products that are unhealthy.

To effectively combat obesity (and maybe we should rephrase that and say combat lethargy? It is a problem for thin peoples' health, too), I think especially problem c) could be something that people from civil society can improve.

If places that have lots of health problems could at least find groups that give free food and activity options to school children, that would already do a lot. Getting a child at least to 16 with a somewhat active body and a BMI under 25 makes it less likely for them to get into extreme health issues later on.

To give people a better overview, groups could create a nutri score on their own if government does not do it. If there would be some popular online insta channel that gives info about which products you can exchange with something else to save sugar and fat with a broad catalogue, a lot of people might opt for the healthier choices.

At least as far as I know food industry profit margins are not particularly high. Specially over the past few years where inflation has hit everyone pretty hard (that's not to say no one in the food industry has high margins, it also depends on the stage of the food chain you are looking at). Right now everyone is looking for ways to keep cost down by any means necessary, it's brutal.

Hmmm, I don't buy into the poverty/stress angle THAT much. There's lots of places that are poorer than the US and people are at least thin (though obesity worldwide is probably increasing). Obviously poverty and stress is a factor but I would still make the case that culture is as much, if not a larger problem. Anywhere in the world food and cooking are simply part of culture, part of daily life (government has a role as well of course). Going a tad further... your weight shouldn't even be something you think about that much. It shouldn't take conscious effort to maintain a healthy weight. What you eat normally and without thinking too much about it should be enough to keep your weight below obesity. Granted that's more difficult as time goes by almost everywhere. People just don't know how to cook healthy meals and what they eat simply isn't naturally going to keep them.

I've grown to be skeptical of nutri score systems. The issue with poor eating habits aren't the individual parts of said diet but rather how those add up. The notion that eating a bunch of stuff with green labels will add up to a healthy, nutritious, diet is just dumb. These type of labeling is why people go to stores and see soda with no sugar, salt or fat... Or how people end up eating stuff with a nice green no sugar label on it but if you look at the nutritional information you are still looking at about the same number of calories as something with sugar.

 

[shionoro]

At least as far as I know food industry profit margins are not particularly high. Specially over the past few years where inflation has hit everyone pretty hard (that's not to say no one in the food industry has high margins, it also depends on the stage of the food chain you are looking at). Right now everyone is looking for ways to keep cost down by any means necessary, it's brutal.

Hmmm, I don't buy into the poverty/stress angle THAT much. There's lots of places that are poorer than the US and people are at least thin (though obesity worldwide is probably increasing). Obviously poverty and stress is a factor but I would still make the case that culture is as much, if not a larger problem. Anywhere in the world food and cooking are simply part of culture, part of daily life (government has a role as well of course). Going a tad further... your weight shouldn't even be something you think about that much. It shouldn't take conscious effort to maintain a healthy weight. What you eat normally and without thinking too much about it should be enough to keep your weight below obesity. Granted that's more difficult as time goes by almost everywhere. People just don't know how to cook healthy meals and what they eat simply isn't naturally going to keep them.

I've grown to be skeptical of nutri score systems. The issue with poor eating habits aren't the individual parts of said diet but rather how those add up. The notion that eating a bunch of stuff with green labels will add up to a healthy, nutritious, diet is just dumb. These type of labeling is why people go to stores and see soda with no sugar, salt or fat... Or how people end up eating stuff with a nice green no sugar label on it but if you look at the nutritional information you are still looking at about the same number of calories as something with sugar.

The "high margins" thing especially plays a role with sugar. Sugary products often have very high win margins (as far as sweets and sodas go) and sugar can help to make products cheaper (because you can make bad things taste good). As a bonus, sugar is also addictive. Why would the food industry not use high amounts of sugar if you can make a product cheaper and more addictive with it? They would only stop if they are strongly disincentivized. I do think these regulations can work if they are done right. At least the sugar levy that UK uses did work.

I think stress and culture go hand in hand. Of course, there are places poorer than the US that are less obese, but are these places equally "out of time" as the US is? If we are talking a third world country that has stay-at-home mothers and grandma's that cook with fresh ingredients they got from the village market, then this is a very different environment to a household in the US with two earners. Of course, what people traditionally eat does play a role. But the food industry has it way easier to sell unhealthy "stress food" to overstressed people. Let's be honest here, when I am stressed, I also drink a lot of soda and would opt to eat s th that makes my brain do happy things. I am less likely to put in effort to cook a balanced meal. If my grandma who lives with us cooked something healthy for me and gives me a little chocolate against the stress, that is way more healthy and I would definitely rather have that, but that is not what people in the US (or many other first world countries) can usually get.

I like the Nutri score because it does work when one takes the behavior of normal people into account. There have been many longterm studies in France about their Nutri score system and what they found was that the Nutri score mostly had an effect on comparative food. As in: People who want to buy a softdrink would rather take one with a D than an E. People who wanted to buy Pizza would rather take B than C. And so on. The balance of their diet is independent from the amount of sugar, salt and unsaturized fat they ingest. So of course you might still eat unhealthy if you eat products with a good Nutri score, but the Nutri score does not make that more likely. Instead, the Nutri score makes it easier for consumers to decide which products are rich on things that can lead to health problems even in a balanced diet. And once they are informed about this, they tend to take better decisions when choosing their food. For example, it makes it harder for the industry to pitch high sugar flakes and fruit juice as healthy breakfast options when these products are deep red on the counter. Of course, a Nutri score would have take nonsugar sweeteners into account, too, but even if it is just sugar/fat/salt/protein/fiber it would already be really helpful.