Interestingly Poland was one of the first to decriminalise homoexuality and declassify it as as a mental illness. The current paradigm of anti LGBT sentiment seem to be imported from Russia and America. Sure there were home grown bigots, but they became normalised and amplified by what’s going on in the world.
Pretty sure that’s why they invented the stock market in the first place… Faustian deal where innovators and disruptors trade their future potential for a leg up today. In exchange the wealthy slowly seize whatever new technology or IP is created, guaranteeing their position into the future.
Big tech wonder boys like Zuckerberg and others coming out of Y Combinator aren’t miracle stories - they are the chosen few handpicked by yesterdays elite to help them close the circle from others.
It scares me that generations before and after millennials are not as proficient with technology. Before makes perfect sense, but younger people being unable to use a computer or tell if they’re being scammed really disheartens me. I blame the excesses of capitalism and ignorance of our lawmakers.
The way the web and services are structured is extremely unfair to the consumer. We pay for access to the internet, then we pay for access to premium content sources and to stop ads for showing. So many middle men… where is the benefit exactly? How is a podcast better than my community radio?
The ownership of digital goods is the worst part of all. Games, music, tv shows… stuff that is a formative part of your life you should be able to pass onto your kids isn’t yours. You own a “license” which is just a record in some database that can be revoked between company acquisitions.
What is the charge? Biting a breast? A succulent Chinese breast?
Yay ineffective posturing! I hope they spent millions on Facebook ads… /s
A unified China/Russia alliance
The Red Alert and Generals cross over we don’t want!
More realistically, he’ll probably die of old age or be ousted by someone younger and more exciting to the wealthy elite that keep Putin in power. Real change may come after that, but a change in leadership is not going to immediately fix long term issues like corruption, wealth disparity, etc.
The only thing more pathetic and limp than this law is the men who wrote it.
I think they’ve navigated a situation that looked hopeless better than anyone in the west could have expected. We all hoped economic sanctions were enough to elicit a peaceful outcome when negotiating with Russia failed, but instead it’s turned into things like BRICS.
Ah, I see one of the toxic family members is with us.
I was quoting Doctor Who ;)
Don’t you think he looks tired?
I like the idea social media is for kids only and adults are banned. If that applies to advertisers and bots too then it could be a winner!
What I’m hearing is that men in their seventies might be too old and weak to be world leaders…
Weird he hasn’t led his troops into battle without a shirt on yet. It’s almost as if his entire tough guy image is a lie.
Check out the Mistborn and Wheel of Time series for books that are waaay better than Harry Potter. Anything by Brandon Sanderson and Neil Gaiman is a good time.
Also highly recommend any comics by Moebius and/or Alejandro Jodorowsky, and Neil Gaiman. Some incredible mind altering works to enjoy there like The Incal and Sandman.
I think the games industry will start to use open source tools like Blender and Godot more and more. These options have really matured over the years and compete on features and productivity with commercial options.
From a business POV - open source makes a lot of sense when you need a guarantee your investment won’t evaporate because a vendor has cancelled a feature or API your game uses. With open source, if you don’t like a path the upstream code is taking you can fork off and make your own!
Part of the dynamic is also how people are inspired and learning skills. You can learn how to do very advanced stuff in Blender for free on Youtube - why would you pay some private college thousands of dollars to learn an expensive program like Maya to do the same thing?
Here are the number of hours I’ve spent on indie games VS AAA titles, according to my Steam library:
If we’re talking about value - the amount of playtime I’ve gotten out of games with simpler graphics and unique ideas blows the billions spent by the industry out of the water.
That hasn’t been my experience as the gay son of a Polish man in Australia. My dad was hesitant in 2002 when I first came out, but he eventually got over it. It was when Putin started pushing rhetoric about extremist LGBTIQA+ people that my relationship with my dad took a turn for the dark. He’s obsessed with rainbow fascists and won’t hear a word of my side even though I’m the real human he knows. I ended up having to cut all contact with him, and I hold religious fundamentalist populists responsible.