That just says to me that no near future Monster Hunter game is going to be worth playing, since that focus just means that gameplay and story are going to be sacrificed in favor of graphics and gimmicks.

That said, it’s difficult to see people’s homes targeted by protests like this with the rise of the Neo-Nazi right as it is in America.

That sentence neatly sums up a whole raft of issues.

First - yes - this sort of protest is and always will be problematic at best. I understand the impetus (intellectually at least - I’n far too old and cynical to feel that sort of fervor, and I was never that reckless), but even though the cause is just, there’s a point beyond which protest becomes counter-productive, since it alienates people who would otherwise support it.

And there is a very real looming spectre of antisemitism in the US.

But the thing is that protesting the war in Gaza or zionism broadly is NOT part of that threat, and every bit of (self-serving) effort expended on that is diverted from the real threat, which comes from an ever-growing subculture of stock-standard (neo) nazi antisemites - people who are specifically targeting Jews, collectively and individually and even using much of the same rhetoric and stereotypes that the Third Reich used. And notably, that threat doesn’t come from the left, but from the right.

That said though there is a potential threat inherent in the (almost entirely left-wing) protests against the war - the risk that it could expand to a broader condemnation of Israelis in general, or even Jews in general. I’ve actually been sort of half-expecting to see someone try to make a case similar to ACAB regarding Israelis or even Jews - that they’re all [pejoratives] because they’re all, necessarily, either murderous xenophobes or at best enablers of the murderous xenophobes in their midst.

And that then leads back to where you started. That was actually part of the impetus for my first response, though I ended up spinning it a bit different way.

The ongoing efforts to conflate opposition to the war or to zionism with antisemitism are, and I would say rather obviously, not only simply dishonest, but actually a threat to Jews. They invite antisemitism, and to some degree actually are antisemitic, insofar as they assign a particular set of beliefs that many find noxious and worthy of hatred to Jews collectively and individually, entirely regardless of and in many cases directly contrary to the actual beliefs and preferences of individual Jews.

And… I’m yet again, as I am on pretty much a daily basis, reminded of the purported old Chinese curse - “May you live in interesting times.” We certainly do.

Thanks for the response.

Perhaps there is some context this article doesn’t touch on

There is.

This is the most concise and complete summation I could find of the (early) history of the protests against Brooklyn Museum and Anne Pasternak.

https://news.artnet.com/art-world/anne-pasternak-brooklyn-museum-interview-part-2-1409434

Note too that there’s another controversy - regarding the hiring of a white curator for African art - that likely provides the context for the “white supremacist” part of the graffito.

just because they’re Jewish

Actually, a bit of quick research reveals that Brooklyn Museum, and Anne Pasternak specifically, have been the targets of protests since at least 2016, when the museum, under her directorship, put on a show called “This Place” that purported to be an unbiased look at Israel and Palestine, but was backed by pro-occupation funders.

In fact, the group that was organized in response to that show, called “Decolonize This Place,” still exists and is still active.

So it’s exceedingly safe to assume that she wasn’t targeted “just because (she’s) Jewish” but because for at least the past eight years, she, and the museum more broadly, have been seen to be sympathetic to colonialism broadly, and zionism specifically - so much so that at least one organization was formed and still exists specifically to protest them.

Here’s the most concise source for that - an interview with Pasternak from 2018

Funny thing:

The idea that protesting the slaughter of Palestinians equals antisemitism requires starting from the position that slaughtering Palestinians is a fundamental part of the Jewish identity.

There’s really no alternative way to interpret that. If slaughtering Palestinians is not a fundamental part of the Jewish identity, then protesting such slaughter has nothing to do with Judaism, and thus cannot be antisemitic. It’d be like trying to claim that protesting cars is anti-Amish.

So all these people quoted here are essentially saying that slaughtering Palestinians is not just fundamental to being Jewish, but so deeply and uniquely fundamental - so much a part of Jewishness - that opposing such slaughter automatically equals opposing Jews.

Doesn’t that sound sort of… antisemitic?

Well damn.

No - I very deliberately used round peg in the square hole, initially just to avoid the cliche, but the more I thought about it, the more I liked it.

Conservatives pound on round/natural/organic/smooth pegs to try to force them into square/artificial/contrived/rigid holes.

I liked it anyway…

In all seriousness, I sort of pity conservatives.

They’re sort of like the one kid in kindergarten who could never manage to figure out which plastic peg went in which hole and would just get frustrated and throw things. Except that they never grew out of it. Here they are, twenty or thirty or sixty years later, still unable to grasp the simple fact that the world just is what it is and the round peg isn’t going to go in the square hole no matter how much you pound on it, and still angry over it, as if it’s some sort of vast conspiracy rather than just the fact that they’re fucking morons.

That has to be an unpleasant way to live.

Of course, they’re such vile and loathsome and destructive assholes that my pity is short-lived, but still…

Just another step toward making used-to-be-Twitter a safe space for cowardly fascists.

Of course they do.

That’s the central reason that bribes need to be kept out of politics (and don’t feed me any of that shit about lobbying as speech - they’re bribes obviously). It’s not simply that it’s dishonorable or dishonest to base government policy on bribes paid - much more importantly it’s that allowing bribes rewards and thus selects for people who are vile, self-serving scumbags.

It’s not an accident that the billionaires and the politicians are almost entirely foul pieces of shit - it’s because our corrupt political system actually rewards foul pieces of shit and penalizes anyone with actual morals or integrity. It’s not just that politicians can take bribes, but that they essentially have to, just to keep up with the other candidates who do. And similarly it’s not that the wealthy and the corporations can pay bribes, but that they essentially have to, just to compete against the other wealthy people and corporations who do.

Allowing bribes just creates a political system that’s effectively gatekept - “You have to be this corrupt to take part in this system.” And the people who aren’t that corrupt are locked out.

Trump is certainly the most foul, loathsome, corrupt piece of shot in this election (not that Biden isn’t one too - just that Trump has achieved depths virtually unheard of, even in the cesspool of US politics). So Trump is naturally the one who’s going to get the lion’s share of bribes from the foul, loathsome pieces of shit who pay the most and biggest ones.

How is anybody even surprised by this?

This is exactly the sort of thing Beth has been moving towards ever since their first ham-handed attempt to monetize mods deservedly blew up in their faces.

They didn’t give up on the idea - they just shifted to a strategy of doing it incrementally.

And this is just the latest step in that ongoing process.

Think about how bad it’s (very deliberately) going to be by the time TES 6 finally comes out…

I think it started in earnest the day of his AMA, whenever that was.

It actually started long before that. Fuck U Spez was already a meme when all of the API/third-party app stuff took off, but at that point, it was still mostly a holdover from previous examples of Spez being a shithead. The thing that really gave it (new) life was that AMA.

For myself, other people’s anger makes me really uncomfortable, and I avoid it as much as possible, in part specifically because if I don’t, I end up sharing in it, but without a reason or a target. It’s really unpleasant because in a sense, it’s not real.

Real anger - my own anger - feels complete. Not that it’s pleasant or anything - it’s still anger. But in a way, it’s a sort of relief to feel it, since it at least makes sense. I have a reason for it and a target for it, so it fits. Empathetic anger is weird and unsettling, since it’s just there, but it’s not a complete, sensible thing.

And you’re right about targeted emotions, at least in my experience, and while anger is a good example, it’s not the worst.

Grief is awful, because it’s such a horrible, desolate feeling, and just that much worse when it doesn’t even really mean anything.

Jealousy is another bad one - in fact, thinking about it, I’m tempted to say it’s the worst of them all, because it’s so unpleasant, and in multiple ways, and it’s so entirely pointless without an actual reason or target (it’s arguably fairly pointless even with both).

On a somewhat different note, just because I’m thinking about the trials and tribulations of affective empathy - embarrassment is weirdly bad. Partly it’s that it’s unpleasant, but more it’s that it’s such a common aspect of other people’s enjoyment - there’s a great deal of comedy that hinges on laughing at other people’s embarrassment, and it’s all completely lost on me, because I’m stuck just feeling pointlessly vicariously embarrassed.

Broadly, the way I have to deal with all of it is to try to avoid situations in which I’m going to be subjected to other people’s unpleasant emotions, and if I find myself in one, to try to shut myself off from whatever they’re feeling. I’m okay up to a point, but I can feel it coming if I’m getting to the point that it’s going to suck me in, and pretty much all I can do then is resign myself to it or throw up a barricade and just shut it out. Which sort of ironically makes me come across as aloof - as if I’m insensitive rather than overly sensitive. That gnaws at me, but there really isn’t much I can do about it, since I already have enough to deal with with my own emotions, and just don’t have the fortitude to deal with everyone else’s as well.

“Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.” - H.L. Mencken

Normal.

In fact, I don’t think there’s a single person on the entire planet who doesn’t make that exact choice, with the only differences between individuals being which things go in which categories. And, I guess, how aware they are of the fact that that’s what they do.

Israel has been trying to provoke Lebanon into a war for decades now. They’re not going to stop.

If he’s elected, they’ll have free rein to do whatever they want to whoever they want, and they will.

Him being sent to prison would just be a trigger to release the hatred and urge to violence that’s already festering inside them. That hatred and urge to violence is still going to be there if he’s elected - it’ll just manifest a bit differently.

I sure hope so.

There’s a significant number of Trumpers who are just itching to put on their brown shirts red hats and start wreaking violence.

At this point, it’s not really a question of if they do it, but just of when. On that point at least, Trump is right. He just doesnt acknowledge the fact that the reason those people are reaching a breaking point is that he’s self-servingly fed them a steady diet of propaganda and hatred.

So they’re going to go off the rails - they’re vtoo ignorant and too angry and too misled to do anything else.

The worst-case scenario would be that they do it after Trump has (god forbid) been elected. Because then they’re going to get official sanction. They really will be the new brownshirts.

The best-case scenario is that they do it soon, and in response to Trump being rightfully sentenced for the crimes of which he has been rightfully convicted. In that case, they’re going to have neither the illusion of legitimacy nor official sanction, and they’ll just reveal themselves as the lawless, petulant, violent asshats they are.

They like the idea of somebody they think is on their side not giving a shit about the law, and they’re too dull-witted and emotionally invested to recognize the simple fact that somebody who doesn’t give a shit about the law doesn’t give a shit about them either, and will betray them to get what he wants exactly as easily as he broke the law to get what he wants.

That’s the thing with tyrants. They pretty much never come to power entirely on their own. It’s nearly always the case that they come to power because some significant number of people ignored the clear warning signs and supported them anyway - actually believed that supporting this transparently power-hungry lying sack of shit was a good thing.

And then by the time those people figure out the score, it’s too late.

I would presume it’s not paid yet (though the CEO certainly is). That phase of the operation comes later.

For the moment, they’re working to solidify as much control as possible of as much of the fediverse as possible, which control will allow them to gatekeep it, monetize it, extract rent from it and inevitably enshittify it. That, so it’s hoped, will be the phase during which their investment now will pay off.

So… by my count, the board of directors actually outnumber the employees.

At a “non-profit” (until that was revoked) company that gets most of its funding through Patreon.

Years from now (and at this rate, not very many of them), when people wonder how it was that such a promising venture that championed decentralization turned into just another enshittified megacorporation squatting over a piece of internet real estate and extracting rent to pay obscene salaries to a handful of executives - this is how. We’re watching as the foundation is being laid, right now.