Oakwright

UE4 is picking up some of the slack, especially among developers who rely on the bells and whistles that Godot doesn't natively have, but the reason that Godot is picking up so much more of it is that Godot solves the problem and Unreal doesn't.

The specific problem here is a major game engine engaging in new alarming rent-seeking behaviour that, if the changes go through, existing users who did not agree to this will be forced to accept. A game that's been made and released in Unity is stuck, unless the creator removes it from all marketplaces and remakes it in an entirely new engine, which obviously isn't worth it for anyone. A Unity game released in 2015 can theoretically, if popular enough, drive its developer into debt very suddenly and unexpectedly in 2024, and there's nothing the creator can do about it except remove it from existence before that happens. That's what's terrifying here -- not just the wildly unreasonable conditions themselves, but the idea that this kind of monetisation could be applied. Even more reasonable terms, applied as an ongoing runtime fee to games made in the past as well as the future, are equally destructive.

And if Unity gets any version at all of this through legally, whether or not it helps their business, even if they crash and burn, it's over for developers using major corporate engines. Because if this kind of rent seeking gets through on any level whatsoever, others will take advantage of the same sort of thing, it will become normal, it will become industry standard. Exactly the same as microtransactions in full priced games did. Exactly the same as ads on paid streaming services did. Which means that if Unity successfully does it now, Unreal will successfully do it in 5 years' time. And the games being made now will be subject to that. If unity is unsafe, so is unreal; all that switch does is buy time, and given how long games take to develop and how long they stay for sale, that extra time isn't going to mean all that much.

For example, I recently learned that Disney+ had an original film called Crater. It’s scifi, family friendly, and seems cool - I would love to buy it as a holiday gift for my little brother! But: it’s exclusive to D+ and THEY REMOVED IT LITERALLY MONTHS AFTER ITS RELEASE.

The ONLY way I can directly access this film is through piracy. The ONLY available ‘copies’ of this film are hosted on piracy websites. Disney will NEVER release it in theaters, or as something to buy, and it may NEVER return to the streaming service. It will be LOST because we aren’t allowed to purchase it for personal viewing. If I can’t pay to own it, I won’t pay for the privilege of losing it when corporate decides to put it in a vault.

Rich is 'arrived by way of their private jet', is 'dropped $500k on a submarine ticket', is '$500 is a rounding error'.

'$500 dollars for a nine day event they must all be rich white people' no you reactionary rotten potato that is actually an entirely reasonable price for an entirely normal person to pay for an annual event! $500 over the course of a year is approximately equivalent to one big takeout a month! Being able to afford that doesn't make you rich it makes you probably not poor! The 'rich or poor' narrative is a false dichotomy that completely excludes the fact that 'richness' or 'poorness' is a SCALE! It's not fucking categorical! You don't one day magically flip a switch and go from 'poor' to 'rich' or vice versa you see incremental changes over time! Wealth distribution is a (these days, admittedly, rather wonky) motherfucking BELL CURVE! . The fact that capitalism is driving more and more people to either extreme of said curve is just evidence of a broken system, but it doesn't change the fact that most people should have a decent amount of disposable income!

The fact that many people don't have said disposable income doesn't magically make the ones that do 'rich' it makes everyone else poor. And the people at fault for the massive and growing percentage of people living below the poverty line are not the ones managing to stay above it, it's the fault of the actually rich, the ones stealing our time and our health and our wages and our future in pursuit of a number on a screen. And the rich are the only people you're helping by hating the people struggling slightly less than you.

Not to be an extra downer, but OP is entirely correct and moreover, when you notice people from former communist bloc countries or for that matter from currently communist countries or those of us with more knowledge-base than a poorly educated squirrel violently recoil from your "eat the rich" rhetoric?

It's because this isn't hypothetical to them. It happened. It is literally what fucking happened.

This is not an obscure risk. This is historically what has happened. And as with most things, the second that you add any other kind of axis of Otherness (the Black doctor; the queer dentist; the GNC librarian; the Jewish architect), the usual thing happens and the targeting becomes disproportionate.

Again. This is not hypothetical. This is literally history. Literally. The real meaning of "literally" in the case of some of those links. (Yes, every one of the wiki links above has hefty sources in the claims that you can follow back to the primary sources of the survivors and subsequent researchers.) This is "dekulakization", aka "we will distract everyone from our own failures by targeting farmers who have slightly more comfortable lives than the other farmers and convincing everyone they are the problem" aka "one of the many USSR atrocities committed significantly on Ukraine."

This is "round up all the PhDs and ship them to farm-labour concentration camps in the country because they are Enemies of the Revolution". And even in the cases where the "actually rich" do die (instead of escaping and disappearing into comfort), shockingly it seems a new hyper-unequal elite arise, as untouchable and disproportionately powerful as the old "rich" were, because the second poster is also right and there have been times when that group became the dominant one and swept everyone in its wake and we have the fucking body counts.

And finally: while yes, the fee is in fact a barrier for many, if you think there are no poor people at Burning Man you have in fact not met that many Burners. Of the ones I know, that 500$ fee is often the largest chunk of money they have in their hands in the year, and two of them go based on crowdfunded "sponsorships" because Burning Man is their psychological home and they do better going, and their friends and acquaintances care.

The cost as barrier of entry is an active and continual conversation in the community as I understand it (one of many, many active and continual fights conversations) because it's a pretty damn large group of people whose only uniting feature is "they go to Burning Man". Some of them are insufferable smug comfortably-off twats playing at Primitive Artist; some of them are quite unnerving individuals whose touch with reality one often worries about; many are marginal artists whose only privilege is a sufficiently unstable life that they can uproot and head to the desert for the duration on the regular because it's not like they could afford to keep that apartment at home anyway; and then many are just . . . ordinary people who like that kind of thing.

I am also a scientist who eyes the "eat the rich!!!" stuff and the related "scientists don't CARE about REAL people like ME, or CONSIDER the experiences of REAL people like ME, a QUEER/WOMAN/DISABLED PERSON/BIPOC/insert-group-here" anti-establishment vein that is quite popular on tumblr and flinches just a little.... because, yeah, what you're saying right there, Feather. Like, I'm over here working to stay in this fucky system because I want to use its power to shape it to work alongside known structural issues: I'm just one little fat queer autistic, me, but I spend a lot of time talking about how to make fields sit down and pay attention to viewpoints that don't always get the most airtime. and the thing is, I am not remotely alone: I work alongside whole networks of people who want to build a better world this way and are willing to sacrifice quite a lot, personally, to do it.

and that gets totally elided in these kneejerk desires for blood and vengeance, when we assume that "the rich" are the people in the neighborhood next door with a little more stability than we have, rather than the very few extremely wealthy people who... yeah, could buy Burning Man outright if they wanted. That's not say we shouldn't be angry and that this anger and desire for someone to pay isn't potentially productive, but you know the saying: friendly fire isn't [friendly]. It is critically important when we are stoking anger to be careful about exactly where that anger goes so that we can minimize spillover.

And I wonder: where do we draw the line on bloodshed? If you murder a king, the people who loved that king and what he represents turn him into a martyr and a hero. If you murder one of these wealthy oligarchs, some fraction of their people--their children, grandchildren, extended family, people who they've employed for years, people who imagine they could be that wealthy--those people will set their hands against you in their own vengeance. Should they be marched to the guillotine blades?

If you instead make them fear you so badly that they dare not lift a hand in response to their hearts filled with hatred and sorrow, does that build a better world? What stories will their children and yours hear about your terrible power? How tightly would you ferret out the secret, poisoned terror and grief and rage among the hearts of your people?

Wind time back. Return to the present. Consider: what if we fantasized not about murder, but seizure of property and redistribution? What if we simply think "we need to pick up these motherfuckers, shake out their vast heaps of wealth, and distribute it fairly so that everyone including those fuckers can access comfort and safety?"

Do their retainers harbor the same hatred for you? Oh, the money is gone, but everyone shares in the same comfort, even the screaming billionaire. (Vast wealth rots your brain: the billionaires are probably even more upset than they'd be in the timeline of the guillotines, and they are certainly around to enjoy their new humble circumstances, but when they are objectly also provided the freedom and enough resources to maintain the same comfortable lives as everyone else, it's hard for their families to be too resentful--especially when the children ask what happened, when those children are next born.)

Folks are very quick to hit back against well-off snobs who are furious about the Unworthy Poor enjoying a lil luxury, right? We've all seen the responses to the sort of person who, for example, says they got a job in a food shop and they decided they were going to look the other way if someone stole bread, but instead people tried to steal cake and cooked meat, how dare they (real Tumblr example who got rightly tarred and feathered). We understand that "Bought a Starbucks because living in crushing misery is awful and unnecessary" is a fully morally defensible option. We understand that "Struggling to pay rent but bought avocado toast as a spirit- lifting treat" is perfectly logical.

So... why is it so outlandish that maybe someone saved up all that Starbucks and avocado money to buy the one big event in their year that makes them happy? That's how some people work. They save for one big thing rather than splashing on many little things. Charity shop clothes, but one real designer bag. Walking everywhere and making lunch, but a top of the line gaming computer. This is totally normal.

Two-headed tortoise Janus turns 25!

Janus, who also has two hearts, two pairs of lungs and two distinct personalities, would not have survived long in the wild as he cannot retract his heads into his shell to seek shelter from predators. But at the Geneva Natural History Museum, where he hatched in 1997, Bourgoin and her team of carers - who believe he is the world’s oldest bicephalic tortoise - can cater for his every need!

He is under constant surveillance in case he flips over, which could be fatal, and survived a bladder stone operation in 2020. His heads need periodic treatment with vaseline to stop them getting sore when they rub together.

me: if you lost your genitals would you still feel like a man?

“no”

would you feel like a woman?

“no?”

so you wouldn’t feel male or female

“yeah what’s your point?”

So, you wouldn’t fit into the gender binary of male or female? :)

him:

Yeah basically

“so why do they use “they” so much”?

if you were a woman would you want to be called a man?

“no…”

And the opposite?

“no…”

Why why would you want someone to call you male or female if you’re not male or female then?”

Of course. Why wouldn't I be?

firefox isnt going to save you from billboards radio advertising loud promotions blared over the supermarket speakers posters slapped over every streetlight every flier shoved in your mailbox or every cafe that uses spotify for their music and has an ad for its premium service playing every other track.