Notices by dante (dante@masto.posting.haus)

look i know i have a pretty small amount of patience for Gooner Games or Gooner Game Trends in general but even with that in mind Stellar Blade just looks so desperate and tryhard

to be clear i'm not talking about PORN games. those are legit. I mean the weird category of Almost Porn Games. First Descendant, Haydee, Nikke, almost every gacha game, god knows how many MMOs i'll never play, etc

2B? Now there's something. clear fetish by the creator, but also integrated into the game's narrative and (importantly!) not shied away from in overall commentary about the game. 2B is hot because Yoko Taro wanted to put in a hot character in a maid dress. Bayonetta similar. I can respect that take

But Eve from Stellar Blade? Nothing. Does nothing for me. Not even a clear fetish. She's just a barbie doll. Bayonetta had glasses. Bayonetta had gun-heels. Bayonetta went nude and her hair went crazy. Bayonetta had the sauce

if you're reading this and you're the person who politely chided me for saying i considered WW1 "more or less just the lead-up to WW2" back in like 2023 I just want you to know: you were right and now i'm so much more obsessed with WW1 than i ever thought i would be

tonight's read that I really loved https://redsails.org/china-has-billionaires/

it's really funny to watch bsky flounder around with adding a verification checkmark; something that is functionally pointless when compared to their already extant method of having a URL traceback verification, which for all intents and purposes offers better user-done verification than a centralized solution and avoids the awkward nature of a centralized verification service

the use of The Checkmark on twitter was originally for Notable Figures, which was subjective and thus kind of pointless; then it became for Anyone Who Pays Money, at which point it was objective and pointless.

but that doesn't really matter because to watch the bsky commentariat react you'd think that twitter had a hardline caste system that bsky is attempting to replicate, which was never the case because the twitter system functionally did not work

this is, as far as i can tell, mostly because the average user on bsky was "a guy who wanted more followers than he had on twitter" and those people have always been mad about the verification check since it offered an imaginary level of privilege that functionally didn't exist. it was both dumb and pointless *and* harmful in the long run

every time i Realize something about marxism or communism or leftism or whatever i am tempted to post about it but it always feels a bit embarrassing because like certainly some dude in 1922 already had this same thought and put it in better words lmao. it is both humanizing and kind of silly

anyway i always thought it was kind of odd to say the *science* of marxism until i realized yeah it's scientific in the sense that it's a grand theory about human existence that frankly predates both marx and the modern world. the *science* is in the idea that there will always be laborers and that laborers will naturally be in conflict with those who wish to control the laborers

you can put that a million different ways or derive different theories off of it but it's a "science". it is not an issue of 'faith', so to speak, because it's observable and testable. critique is also necessary because, you know, that's how science works. test and update.

where i (& others, demonstrably) get caught up is the fact that... yeah, *technically* those pedants who say "true communism has never been tried" are like, *kind of* right? the most prominent ML state in the world rn (China) does not claim to 'be' communist, but to be 'working toward' communism, which is a fair way to put it. you move in the direction of most-good-for-all as best as you can

anyway i have been thinking about this because i think a lot about what, if any, 'american paths to communism' look like. i have zero faith in it coming from the upperclasses and i have nearly zero faith in it coming through federalism. i am mixed on it coming through anarchism or anarchist movements.

but you can look at Native histories and anticolonial resistance for a marxist understanding of communist theory even without those movements being nominally marxist at all. this is partially because marxism is a science that you *can* discover independently. it's not a doctrine per se, it's a framework

all the LA fire-related public town halls are like. a firefighter guy saying "well. we're doing our best but it's really hard out there. it would be nice to have more resources" followed by some policeman who proudly announces that if anyone wants food or water the police will kill them on sight

GET THEIR ASSES!!!!!!! GET EM!!!!!!!!!!

great article here about the history of netflix sludge. thank god someone (other than me and my friends) is saying it https://www.nplusonemag.com/issue-49/essays/casual-viewing/