IslandRebel

> The politicians, be it President, Prime or other Ministers, or just members of the parlament - usually don't directly put criminals behind bars.

Obviously. I would have thought that it would be obvious that it is delegated to the various security services.

> Officially the assassination was done by criminal gang that had ties with previous government - that just so happened to also be (former) members of the special antiterorist (military) police.

Well, bringing the rule of law didn't work out for him, did it?

He should have made sure these people were tracked down ASAP and killed. To have law and order, you need to have order first.

> They are waaaay more corrupt.

People on the other side of the aisle say the same thing. I think they are all scumbags.

I see grifting, corruption and all sorts of shenanigans on both sides.

> They also have morality completely at odds to mine.

Hyper-partisan people like yourself will hand waive any wrongdoings because you happen to say things you like. All you are doing is treating politics as a team sport. I have no interest in it.

Part of dealing with someone might be just making sure that you associate with them. Also dealing with criminals often means imprisoning them or killing them (depending on how dangerous they are).

I never said they were equally corrupt. What I notice quite often, especially from people that are the most partisan, is that they will add things you never said because they think they are arguing with an imaginary person constructed in their head.

I never mentioned any particular politicians and was making a general observation that if you haven't had to deal with unsavoury characters, dishonest actors and quasi-crooks, you will lack the experience of how to deal with them. These people exist in all walks of life.

The person I was replying to was playing team sports, which I find tiresome, because every post about everything has to become about Trump or whoever the current villain of the week is. It is quite frankly moronic.

I've seen posts of yours on other threads, and all I have to say to you is that you keep on pretending that only the politicians you don't like are the corrupt ones; this is very naive.

They are more vulnerable because they are not used to dealing with these types of people.

I would say without Patrick Stewart's performance, the show would have been a disaster. He really carried the early seasons of the show, even when the writing was quite poor.

The logic is "left good, right bad". In other places that people here would scoff at it, it is the opposite way around "right good, left bad".

Unfortunately, political tribalism is rife online, and it is as bad here as anywhere else.

They both blame each other for their own incompetence.

> It's extremely common that when a right wing government transitions to a left wing government, the left wing government notices it has insane unpayable debt and tries a bunch of desperate things to repay it.

They both often continue increasing deficits and spending until they can't.

> Mamdani had the same problem but was luckily able to negotiate practicable payment plans on NYC's debt.

The last right-wing mayor was Bloomberg (I don't know how right-wing Bloomberg really is when he tried running as a Democrat), and that was 13 years ago.

> Also I believe it's much easier to solve well intentioned stupidity than to solve malice.

Well-intentioned stupidity can go on for far longer because people won't want to intervene because of a negative perception when intervening. If there is malice, there isn't a negative perception when intervening.

Why do left-wing politicians always get given an out when they do malicious stuff, but the right doesn't? I think all politicians are lying and corrupt scumbags.

I find it astounding that people can apply different rules to one group of politicians because they say things they like. I hold them all to the same standard; I assume they are all lying and corrupt until proven otherwise.

It could be the combination of her being dark-skinned and not receiving it through her diet.

From https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/vitamins-and-minerals/vitamin-...

They list oily fish, red meat, egg yolks, fortified foods, and liver. I can see some diets not having those.

> I mean, if you want to look at things purely objectively, the last of us was a great game. It made tons of money, got amazing reviews, its recommended and loved by gamers, it frequently appears in lists of the best games ever made, it's won literally hundreds of awards, other game developers have cited it as an influence in their own highly acclaimed works, and it spawned (for better or worse) a media franchise that includes books, comics, television, a stage production, a Universal Studios theme part attraction, a sequel, and a handful of remakes/releases.

Ok, I am going to have to break down why this is just bad argumentation:

- Money argument - By that logic, Call of Duty, FIFA or Madden are the best games of all time. When they clearly are not, as they print cash every year for EA and Activision. That would also mean that the Marvel movies were the best movies ever made. You and I know that is BS.

- Popularity argument - This is the classic argumentum ad populum. Something is not good because it is popular. Good things are often popular, but they are not good because they are popular.

- TV/Movie/whatever adaptations – This is simply milking the franchise for all it is worth. That isn't a good thing.

- Creatively inspired for highly acclaimed works. Often there are many highly acclaimed works in the industry that the players don't like. This happens all the time; something will get a good review score, and the player score will be very different. Look at what is being streamed to see what people actually like.

- Award ceremonies for film, TV and music have always been lampooned for being ridiculous and not a good metric of anything the public cares about. This has been done to death in comedy movies, where they openly lampoon these award ceremonies for what they are. Award ceremonies are simply the industry congratulating itself and a networking/party event.

None of these are good arguments. I am talking about gameplay and replay-ability. TLOU has bad replayability.

> It hits every benchmark except your personal feelings about it. Even as a fan I'd agree that it wasn't without flaws, but none of them were enough to make the game a bad one. The slow movement and scavenging were a part of the game's atmosphere that to many were actually beneficial to the game.

These are not personal feelings. I gave direct examples of where the combat/movement was bad or things that were promised were not delivered in the game.

The presentation of it carries the entire game. It is similar to Uncharted. TLOU is simply Uncharted with a skin.

Contrast that with Spider-Man 1&2, where I skip all the cutscenes for the most part (as the acting and script are terrible); the gameplay is amazing.

Pity I can't skip the cutscenes (consistently) in the Miles Morales standalone DLC/game. The plot and dialogue in that game are dire.

> I, and countless others, have replayed the game and didn't have that issue. It's kind of like going back to movie or book. Some people don't see the point in that either. It's not the best game for replay value. but there are some alternate game options provided and collectables if you missed any in the first run. Players can also experiment with with different weapons/upgrades/tactics. I suspect that most people who go back, go back for the story.

So one of my criticisms was replay-ability. You admit it is a problem. The reason the replayability is bad is because the gameplay is bad.

> Sure, old God of War games. The nudity in those games have been a source of controversy and it's been dialed back. Not that it had any impact on the actual rating thanks to tons of violence but prudish Americans are fine with killing for some reason while drawing the line at boobs. There's no doubt that there will be people who won't or can't play games with a lot of nudity. Personally, I think America should grow up and get over the weird sex hangups, but Corporate America is full of cowards who only care about the bottom line and that doesn't encourage them to to push boundaries.

No, it hasn't been dialled back. It has been removed entirely. The violence has also been dialled back. This was done at the request, I suspect, of Sony. Sony censors almost every games on PlayStation.

> "lack of cleavage" is really not something you can honestly criticize Stellar Blade for, even though some outfits have been changed. They absolutely caved and censored the work from where they started though

They literally dialled it back at the request of Sony.

> I didn't have any issue with the design of Lara for the reboots. She certainly wasn't sexless. (https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/c/cb/Lara_Croft_(2...) and was still attractive

You didn't read what I said. I am talking about how she is treated in the game by the other characters, not that she looks good. I specifically said she looks great.

That isn't the reality of moderation. Often moderation effectively acts as a form of censorship, and the two work together. Often moderators either power trip or misunderstand the situation and allow bad actors to abuse the rules to their advantage to have people shut out of the group.

This happens, btw, when there are the most rules and heavy-handed moderation. Places that are less moderated, this rarely happens because people will directly call this behaviour out and the moderators are only intervening on important stuff, e.g., threats of violence, illegal material, etc.

> This is getting ridiculous, you've been inventing weird claims this whole discussion and condescendingly arguing against them, and getting personal on top of that.

I've quoted what you said and responded to them point by point. You said you understand the need to persecute political opponents (those being Reform, which is a centre-right party) and support thugs that break the law in the UK (where I live).

That is what you said. I have my issues with how the British State is run. I, however, understand that I have literally no ability to change any of this.

> Talking about a war of invasion by a fascist country on the border of your continent and a genocide.

"Everything I don't like is fascism."

The genocide is in the Middle East. I have zero ability to affect events there. Israel isn't fascist either because Zionism is not fascism.

As for the Russo-Ukraine war, not every political ideology that isn't democratic western values is fascist. Ukraine/Russia is a proxy war between the Western Allies and countries outside of that alliance.

> I'm wasting my time.

You are repeating poor arguments that equate to "bash the fash", and having a poor understanding of geopolitics isn't my failing and isn't going to convince anyone that isn't an idiot or mind-raped by propaganda.

No, I am not. I've heard a lot of bullshit in politics over the last decade. You got to show me proof. Otherwise, I am not interested in such claims because they are often unfounded or straight-up propaganda.

You should demand evidence for claims, especially if they are serious as you claim.

Not wanting to get involved with foreign wars is not the same as supporting a war.

If any of the parties got any support from Russia directly, they would be arrested. Have they been arrested? If not, then whatever you've been told about them being involved with Russia is bullshit. The government would like to find any excuse to lock up certain individuals in the UK; this includes both those on the left and the right.

> Violent resistance to genocide is something I fully support, with absolutely zero qualms about what unfortunate drone, military company, or government official gets hurt in the process. I'd expect everyone would support that, no?

No, I don't agree. I don't want a bunch of violent thugs roaming around the UK who think they are morally righteous committing crimes. This will have perverse side effects that you and I cannot predict.

The fact that you haven't considered this fact or don't care shows how naive you are.

> Mate... are you serious?

Yes. What you are advocating for is similar to fascism.

> An advice for you: stop supporting Russia and Israel, you could hardly have chosen a worse moral alignment.

This is the problem with almost every discussion on the net with people like you. Where did I say I support either Russia or Israel? Nowhere.

I don't care about Russia and Israel. This is full of us-vs-them politics-brained bullshit that I often encounter. I will spell it out to you, I don't care about foreign wars that I have no control over. I suggest you start reading some actual literature.

https://classics.mit.edu/Epictetus/epicench.html

I think you are a useful idiot if you believe nonsense like "Russia hacked Brexit" and similar claims. I have friends and family that believe this, unfortunately.

I also have very little respect for people that justify violence because they believe they are morally righteous. Doesn't matter whether they are left/right, Muslim, Christian, Jew, Hindu, Buddist etc.

The state claims everything they disapprove of to be done by Russia, and these useful idiots keep on believing them.

> I used to think like you, but living in a country where the far right is about to come to power, and seeing fundamental freedoms disappear by the day, I've understood why people believe that parties like Reform and AFD (and many other parties, who resemble each other as much in their ideology as in their links with Russia, a useful signal) have to be stopped in their tracks while there's a chance, and if we find ourselves in a 'first they came for the far-right' type of situation, that's a bridge we'll have time to think about later.

I am in the UK, and Reform, which isn't far right (they are like UKIP dissaffected conservatives and reactionaries), is not going to come into power. In all likelihood they are going to split the Conservative vote.

> The normalisation of fascism, the criminalisation of resistance or even of protests, all the way to the boot stomping on your face, all those things appear so fast, too fast to react. So I can see why one would prefer to take the rights of far-right politicians away. If Corbyn came to power and witchhunted Reform, I would think much less of Corbyn but I'd still understand why others would cheer on that.

I actually like Corbyn (for all his faults), and I think he is fundamentally a good man and wouldn't stoop as low as persecuting his political opponents.

As for witch hunts, historically they've turned out to be a very bad idea. I shouldn't need to comment any further.

> And when it comes to Palestine Action, they did the kind of violent crimes that I hope will be taught to future generations, same as we taught about resistance in WWII. I and everyone else support Palestine Action not because of the old women, but because they did burglary and vandalism against a terrorist state carrying out genocide. Sunshine and rainbows.

"Violent crimes are okay when people I politically agree with do it."

It doesn't matter to me if a violent gang of thugs is left wing or right; they are violent thugs. I think you need to take a break from online politics because it has you justifying the sort of behaviour that you claim to oppose (fascism).

Why would you "like to hope so"? The same laws should exist for everyone and that includes agents of the state.

As for people supporting "Palestine Action", activists always have their most sympathetic looking members e.g. elderly women to have arrested as it makes the authorities look worse.

Palestine Action have done at least two violent crimes and several hundred other offences including burglary, vandalism.

Just because people have the politics you like doesn't mean they are all sunshine and rainbows.

The Reform/Restore parties you dislike are pursuing change legally and peacefully through the ballot box.

It going to split the conservative vote and they are still likely to come up better than the conservatives in voter share but lose on seats.

> Okay, here he is doing just that. Didn't watch it, tries to weigh in on it for clout. His own comment section is not having it.

I wouldn't watch Series 4 & 5 of The Boys if I had a time machine. So I don't blame him, tbh.

> In his Sydney Sweeney video, which is a pretty bad video in general because it doesn't engage at all with why people might not like her, he has a very long rant (for him) about liberal women and how broken they are. How they've been corrupted by college and they're just secretly jealous of beautiful women. Just empty ranting full of every stereotype he could pull out of a hat. He doesn't respond to the fact that it's a gambling ad at all, which a huge amount of people criticized. He boils everything down to "She's hot and women hate that." He doesn't even think it's worth mentioning what people actually said. He posts a bunch of completely unrelated studies to the point he is making

It is a slop video that they put out to keep the algorithm gods happy at YouTube. I don't expect a Critical Drinker video to be some well-researched social study on political biases in media.

As for the advert itself. A lot of the criticism I heard was because she was basically naked. I didn't even know it was a gambling ad until recently. How much of this is organic is hard to say, as the whole controversy in almost all of her adverts is probably done by either her or whatever company hired her to do the advertising campaign.

The same thing happens every time a Sydney Sweeney ad comes out. She does some provocative or "safe-edgy" stuff, and there is a bunch of controversy drummed up. Everyone the talks about the advert and then she has made another huge sum of money.

> Then he, for whatever reason, attacks the interviewer that asked Sydney about the American Eagle ad? Like, I think anybody can understand this is an interviewer giving a person a chance to react to news.

I've seen the clip. The question was bullshit. Anyone that isn't terminally politics brained recognised the play on words was due to her being attractive. It was that simple. She is probably contractually obliged not to say anything either.

Again, this whole controversy was likely manufactured by American Eagle themselves to have everyone looking at the advert.

Well done. You got played like everyone else did.

> Why is he just seeing a woman and implying she's secretly seething with anger? It's an extremely creepy way to talk about people.

Because the trope is that is what lefty female journalists are in that space.

If you want to be a very popular YouTuber, all you have to do is tell your audience what they want to hear. There is a whole small industry of these people on YouTube/Rumble and Kick. They cover the entertainment news and shit on dumb movies and TV series (which are most of them, tbh), and most of the time people have this stuff on in the background while they are doing their boring office job.

Every YouTuber has "dents", "marks". The former are people that eat up everything they say, and they are normally their whales.

They also have a bunch of orbiters; these are other smaller YouTubers and close associates that will do all their "sweeping" (cleaning up controversies), and others will act as their attack dogs.

This happens in almost every community of creators on YouTube. Getting upset about it is a waste of time.

> Most gamers would disagree with you. That's alright, art is subjective and different people are allowed to like different things. Maybe you just don't like games with a lot of story? If so there are plenty of genres that aren't story heavy like arcade games, tile-matching/match 3 games, fighting, FPS, sports, etc. Or maybe action/adventure might just not be the genre for you?

I understand it is a contrarian take. That doesn't mean that it is without merit. I also find it tiresome when people just claim everything is subjective when it really isn't.

The game play is bad. Joel's movement is slow, like too slow. You can't take certain enemies down without certain weapons. The scavenging aspect becomes a chore.

The buddy system they demoed originally was downgraded heavily from the original E3 demo, which was probably 20 years ago now. They took Uncharted, slowed it down and layered a depressing story on top which people think is deep.

The game is boring to play once you know the story. The presentation is excellent, masks this. It does not change the fact that the gameplay is at best "ok". It has virtually no replayability, to the point where I was dreading having to play the next section, as I knew it was a total chore.

There are plenty of problems that I can point to that are not subjective.

> As for original mechanics there's very little out there, but that was true even in the 2000s to the mid-2010s (which would include both uncharted, and the last of us). Most games are just building off of what's been done before. You can find clever twists on old mechanics or rare combinations of them, but it's very hard to find something really different. When you do, it's hit or miss on them being worthwhile, but sometimes the novelty helps make up for the shortcomings.

I am talking about the fact that they didn't even bother changing it. IIRC, in the Farcry games, you can essentially poison/confuse enemies via arrows or something. This exists in a bunch of games.

Ghosts of Tshushima has the exact same mechanic. They didn't even bother dressing it up differently. The game is fun when you are taking out the camps. However, there is the whole Assassin's Creed gameplay collect-a-thon.

A lot of the games are carbon-copy clones of one another, and the only thing that is different is the setting.

> Upgrade systems are supposed to provide progression. It rewards you for your progress in the game with fun abilities. It also helps keep gameplay fresh over the 25/40/60/120+ hours you play by giving you a steady stream of exciting new abilities/weapons to try out. There's often a new game+ option that lets you play the game again with all the best abilities from the start. Upgrade systems are generally a good thing! Sometimes things can go wrong though, for example one of the many problems with Marvel's Spider-Man 2 was starting your character out far too weak compared to how he was at end of the first game and the upgrades you eventually got weren't great either.

I know what it's supposed to do. The games are long because they are padding with bullshit. Why do I want to write haikus in an action game? It's not even a mini game, FFS. They really shouldn't be. It becomes a chore. I've got hundreds of hours in Hell Divers, yet it isn't because I can fire up the game for 30 minutes or all Saturday evening.

How it is implemented often sucks. I am supposed to believe at the start of Ghosts of Tshushima, Jin, who is a trained samurai, can barely fight. The old GoW games at least de-powered you via the plot device, and all the core game mechanics still worked. Why do I have to have a cut scene (which you have to play through but is still really a cut scene) to stab a Mongol in the back?

How about I start awesome and become even more awesome? Or make it make sense that I am weak and incorporate it into the gameplay itself.

> Speaking as a somewhat older gamer, if you really want variety in gameplay I'd recommend trying to branch out to new genres, indie titles, and lower budget PC games. The AAA games with huge budgets can tell a great story with amazing visuals and satisfying gameplay but they aren't going to take a lot of risks because of the amount of money on the line. That might also be why they can come off as PG-13, they want a wide audience.

I am not talking about what I like/don't like. My entire critique is around the problems with the Last of Us and Triple-A games, as you specifically mentioned. I play different games these days and just picked up Ghost of Tsushima because it was on sale and I heard it was good.

As for PG-13, the old God of War games managed to garner a wide audience while being R rated. The argument doesn't make sense.

They also soft-censor a lot of games. For example, the Stellar Blade demo originally (it was patched later) had a lot of gore and cleavage. The game that finally released toned down both.

The new Tomb Raider games (not so new now), Lara is completely sexless. You have this gorgeous athletic woman, and nobody finds her attractive or even comments on it?

Respectfully, you are taking him far too seriously. He is playing the character of a drunk, grumpy Scottish guy complaining about things. It is an old TV trope. He has just applied it to doing film/game/TV reviews/commentary. It's not supposed to be taken that seriously.

I am not a fan of him and don't like the culture war stuff, but I've seen the odd video from him in the past. He does have good criticism of films/games, where he highlights how badly written many of them are or how character motivations don't make sense.

He has a huge fan base on YouTube. You don't get that by being dull or not having any valid criticisms. You are way off base.

> Being a fan of him is a litmus test for tribalism.

The irony here is that when you make statements like this, you are engaging in tribalism.

Critical Drinker has 2.4 million subscribers on YouTube. I frequently am surprised by the sorts of people that will watch some YouTuber. There is a show (unrelated) I watch where I would expect the audience to be male-dominated, and many of the callers and super-chat donations are from women. I was quite surprised.

I would imagine he has a more diverse audience than you would expect.

> I've also learned a lot of people who listen to him don't play games to begin with and are usually just larping. It is what it is.

A lot of people like watching people shit on popular media. Cinemasins was doing the exact same thing a decade ago. I remember them ripping on the dumb stuff that didn't make sense in the original Avengers movie and all the goofs that you are unlikely to notice in the cinema.

People "hate watch" a lot of shows. My sister and I used to hate watch CSI Miami when we were in our teens/early 20s, and that was in the mid-2000s.

Last of US I replayed about 5 years ago on the PS4, and it isn't a good game. I recently revisited Uncharted (Last of Us is just Uncharted with a more serious tone), and they are not good games. I think casual audiences like them because of the heavy story element, but they are quite tiresome to play. Naughty Dog excels at presentation, but the gameplay is just not there.

There are also a bunch of "action/adventure" mechanics that seem to be identical in a bunch of mainstream games. You have an upgrade system, so the actual gameplay of the game is bad at the start because you don't have any of the fun abilities at the start, open world mechanics, a very bland open world and the stories are very PG-13, and the characters are kind of bland in the main story. I was playing Ghosts of Tshushima, and many of the mechanics come straight from Farcry 3. I think I am not going to bother completing it. I feel like I've played this game many times before because it's so similar to other games. I would have probably got bored with it before now if it wasn't for the setting.

Generally, a lot of people are still replaying some of the greats from the late 2000s to the mid-2010s because the games weren't nearly as bland.

I think many of these games you've listed are a 7/10. A lot of games I am playing are either years old now or I am going back to older consoles (via emulation normally) and the classic games on them.

> If Europe would simply have banned combustion engines and gas boilers, emissions would have decreased drastically while prices would also decrease. Alas, Europe prioritized bad stuff instead.

I will remove the gas boiler when you give me £15,000 to put solar panels on my roof with a storage battery and to remove all the gas stuff out my house. I don't have a large house either (2 Bedroom).

A typical Debian upgrade process is more involved than that.