WatDabney
@WatDabney@lemmy.dbzer0.com
- Comment on Who's your favorite female protagonist in a video game? (Add pic of character in response) 3 days ago:
Shukran from Arabian Nights: Sabaku no Seirei Ou on the Super Famicom
Ifrit is a djinn who was once the king of the djinn. Then he was cursed and bound to a ring until he granted the wishes of 1000 people. He’s granted wishes to 999 people when his ring comes into the possession of an orphan girl named Shukran. Over the years he’s become bitter and cynical, and he just expects she’s going to want gold or such, but instead, to his surprise and dismay, she wishes to bring peace to the land. And she means it. So Ifrit has to first set out to find and recruit the most powerful of his former djinn subjects, and since he can’t stray far from the ring, Shukran has to come along.
She’s far and away the weakest character in the game, but at every turn, when it’s (eventually predictably) revealed that whichever djinn they’re trying to recruit at the moment has a well-deserved grudge against Ifrit and no intention of helping him with anything, it’s Shukran and her optimism, determination, honor and kindness that wins them over, and (after Shukran and Ifrit and their allies complete whatever trial or quest the djinn tasks them with) they end up swearing allegiance not to him, but to her. So while she herself remains ridiculously weak, she is very much the driving force behind the party. And over time she can summon more and more powerful djinn in battle, and they’re decidedly not weak.
- Comment on Israeli settlers attack AFP journalist and olive farmers 4 days ago:
They aren’t settlers - they’re state-sponsored terrorists.
- Comment on US suspends visas for Gazans after far-right influencer posts 1 month ago:
We actually live in a timeline in which a psychopath rages about children getting medical care and politician psychopaths commend her for bringing it to their attention so they can put a stop to it.
- Comment on UN rights office calls on Israel to grant foreign media access to Gaza 1 month ago:
Israel assassinates journalists.
attacks on journalists undermine efforts to document the realities on the ground
And that’s exactly why.
- Comment on ‘It’s a horrible picture’: Gaza faces new threat from antibiotic-resistant disease 1 month ago:
As intended.
That’s most of why Israel has deliberately targeted hospitals, water treatment plants and the like, and has crowded the Palestinians into the smallest and least sanitary conditions possible. They aren’t just or even primarily counting on starvation to do the bulk of their killing for them, but disease as well.
This has been a key part of the plan from the start.
- Comment on Anime Questions, Recommendations, and Discussion Thread [2025, Week 33] 2 months ago:
I just stumbled across easily my favorite series of the season - Milky☆Subway: The Galactic Limited Express
It’s like anime espresso - the small crew (the entire cast and crew credits fit on a single page) somehow crams more story, character development and laugh out loud moments into its 4 minute episodes than most full length series can manage.
For anyone interested in watching it, start with the prequel, Milky☆Highway, which introduces Makina and Chiharu, and the pacing and the dense, multi-layered dialogue that contribute to cranming so much deliciousness into so little space.
And I’d say that Yohei Kameyama is definitely someone to watch. I can only imagine what they could accomplish with more run-time and a bigger budget.
- Comment on The Age-Checked Internet Has Arrived 2 months ago:
That’s likely true.
But that’s not going to stop governments from trying, and mostly succeeding, since beating their censorship will require both the will and the ability to break the law. Granted that their systems will certainly be flawed, it will still require at least some minimal technical ability to beat them, which will put it out of reach of many.
And it will also provide the governments with a handy fallback charge to bring against pretty much anyone they deem troublesome enough, since they’ll almost certainly be among those who are breaking the law by beating the system.
- Comment on The Age-Checked Internet Has Arrived 2 months ago:
- Comment on The Age-Checked Internet Has Arrived 2 months ago:
Since the earliest days of the internet, governments have been scheming to gain control over the dissemination of content - to have authority over what people can and cannot see.
Autocracies like Russia, China and North Korea simply established censorships regimes, but the best that western governments have generally been able to do is ban content that is illegal in and of itself, like child porn. Their goal, all along, has been to establish systems by which to censor content that is not in and of itself illegal.
This is the most success they’ve had yet.
- Comment on Surprising no one, new research says AI Overviews cause massive drop in search clicks 2 months ago:
Very much yes.
I have this great visual image of the corporate web, marked by neon signs and billboards and holographic ads, populated entirely by bots talking to each other while the humans sneak away, giggling and shushing each other.
- Comment on Surprising no one, new research says AI Overviews cause massive drop in search clicks 2 months ago:
As intended.
First they’re going to collapse the ad model by eliminating most clicks.
Then they’re going to put all of the information they’ve been scraping from the now-bankrupt websites behind paywalls.
- Comment on Forget copyright strikes, a retro gaming YouTuber faces possible jail time for reviewing gaming handhelds 2 months ago:
Remember the good ol’ days, when it was only the urban housing market that was dominated by rent-seeking parasites?
- Comment on Scottish University agreed to 'monitor' students for weapons company supplying IDF, emails reveal 2 months ago:
weapons company
That’s the most important bit.
An awful lot of the otherwise inexplicable international support for the utter evil Israel is visiting on Gaza exists solely because it’s profitable for a handful of corporate parasites.
Which is its own sort of evil.
- Comment on The Fediverse Passport: A needed tool. 3 months ago:
And further - the establishment of a single, fediverse-wide account for each user would make it far too easy for those so inclined to silence anyone they wanted merely by banning their one and only account.
- Comment on The Fediverse Passport: A needed tool. 3 months ago:
It’s not a matter of how ones profile would be accessed, but how it would be created in the first place snd how it would be managed.
Necessarily, those who implement the creation of accounts have control over how they’re created, who is allowed to create them and how they will be handled after creation.
Any scheme to establish one “central” (your own term) account for the entire fediverse will necessarily be managed by one “central” service, which means one “central” authority over account creation and management
- Comment on The Fediverse Passport: A needed tool. 3 months ago:
Decentralization is a feature - not a bug.
- Comment on Palantir may be engaging in a coordinated disinformation campaign by astroturfing these news-related subreddits: r/world, r/newsletter, r/investinq, and r/tech_news 3 months ago:
Setting aside the veritable TITAN-loads of shady shit Palsntir is up to, it’s also worth noting that Reddit’s policy changes have made it clear that providing a platform for the spread of disinformation is a central part of its current business model, so I’d assume that not only is Palantir using it for that purpose, but that they are far from alone.
- Comment on Tech CEOs are using AI to replace themselves / CEOs from Zoom and Klarna used AI avatars while reporting earnings 4 months ago:
They need to be sitting in their plush offices at the top of buildings full of busy workers to keep up the pretense that they deserve their obscene pay. Sitting in a plush office at the top of an empty building just shines a spotlight on how useless they actually are.
- Comment on Tech CEOs are using AI to replace themselves / CEOs from Zoom and Klarna used AI avatars while reporting earnings 4 months ago:
So even the little tiny bit of work they have to do to justify their obscene salaries is too much for them.
- Comment on Mom sues porn sites (Including Chaturbate, Jerkmate, Superporn and Hentaicity) for noncompliance with Kansas age assurance law; Teen can no longer enjoy life after mom caught him visiting Chaturbate 4 months ago:
“I’m sorry ma’am, but could you explain your interest in the sex life of a 14 year old?”
- Comment on ‘I’m not looking for a deal’: Trump says EU tariffs staying at fifty percent 4 months ago:
Though he would be open to a bribe. Maybe a nice yacht to match his jet.
- Comment on Marjorie Taylor Greene picked a fight with Grok 4 months ago:
How do angry, hateful, vicious people like MTG convince themselves they’re Christian?
I don’t think it’s a pose - she appears to be entirely sincere about her claim to Christianity.
And I understand the basic mechanics of it - they pick and choose which parts of the Bible to highlight and which to ignore, and how to self-servingly interpret the ones they do pick.
But in a more fundamental sense, I still don’t understand how they do it. Are they really entirely devoid of self-awareness or conscience? How is that even possible? Or do they have at least some rudimentary self-awareness and conscience, but they just ignore it? How is that even possible?
- Comment on Trump's image of dead 'white farmers' came from Reuters footage in Congo, not South Africa 4 months ago:
Or in other words, Trump reveals himself to be a lying sack of shit. Again.
Probably not even the first time today.
- Comment on [deleted] 5 months ago:
Not necessarily.
Trump doing his thing 2016-2020 met with a lot of obstacles and pushback.
Then he was out of office for four years, and while he was crashing around spewing nonsense and vitriol, some very intelligent and very evil people were working behind the scenes to secure some significant Supreme Court rulings and to draw up a step-by-step plan for instituting fascism in the US.
And now Trump doing his thing is met with almost no obstacles or pushback - virtually the entire government is bending over backwards to enable him.
And it must be noted that he’s not particularly smart or sane, but he is a childishly greedy and selfish narcissist. That means he’s incredibly easy to manipulate. All anyone has to do is frame something in a way that appeals to his crippled emotions and drop a few hints to get him going in the right direction, then just stand back and let him do his thing.
Not saying that that’s certainly what is happening, but…
- Comment on Strange sell-off in the dollar raises the specter of investors losing trust in the US under Trump 5 months ago:
What? You mean investors might be wary of placing trust in the value of the dollar under the sdministration of a vindictive childish, capricious, narcissistic moron who’s surrounded himself with groteaquely unqualified sycophants?
Who would’ve guessed?
- Comment on Man deported to El Salvador will never live back in US, says White House 5 months ago:
This Republican administration is doing everything in its power to establish the precedent that it can disappear whoever it wants into a foreign prison over which even the leader of that nation claims to have no aithority, and further that it can do so whenever it wants, for any reason it wants, entirelybregardless of any other governmental ruling, including a direct court order.
Very obviously, this is not a power that an office in a nation of liberty and justice should ever possess, for any reason, ever.
One would think that Republicans would be particularly determined in their opposition to that, rather than being the ones responsible for it.
- Comment on Hot take: Get your game reviews from gamers, not from collectors 5 months ago:
I’m just the opposite.
I still own my SNES and all of its games from back in the day (and an NES, an original XBox and a PSX with their games), and they’re all in boxes in my garage. Pretty much as soon as emulation became viable, that became my preferred way to play, since I don’t have screw with wires and connections and consoles and cartridges or discs and all the rest of that clutter. I just click on an icon, select a game from a list, and away I go.
- Comment on Hot take: Get your game reviews from gamers, not from collectors 5 months ago:
Well… yeah. True.
- Comment on Hot take: Get your game reviews from gamers, not from collectors 5 months ago:
I’d go even further - get them from people who emulatecthe games rather than people who play them on (or merely buy them for) the original hardware.
People who emulate retro games are demonstrably SOLELY interested in playing the games, without any of the collector cachet getting in the way.
- Comment on Are fake-bans on Lemmy a thing? My friend was supposedly instance banned from Lemmy.world, lemmy.blahaj.zone, dbzer0, sh.itjust.works and lemmy.ml but she can still post in some communities 5 months ago:
Those aren’t actually lemmy.world communities.
Everything on that list is a community on that instance (whatever it is - lemm.ee I guess).
For example, a post from a lemm.ee account to AskLemmyWorld@lemmy.world is actually a post to an entirely separate community - AskLemmyWorld@lemmy.world@lemm.ee That lemm.ee community is a mirror of the lemmy.world community (and of all the other communities on all the other instances that mirror it.
That’s how federation actually works. You never actually leave your host instance, and what seems like a post to a community on another instance is actually a post to a locally hosted mirror of that community.
