Teodomo

English is not my main language but wouldn't it be "knowledgeable" [about the specific topic] rather than "smart" here?

From LATAM too and the main thing i think is: fuck. USA has always been very influential towards us. A lot of people want to imitate it because they only know it from the movies and shows or from what famous Americans share about their livestyles. And the right wings leaders over here are eager to play by their playbook. Trump got elected and now the more fringe right wing candidates are being elected here and while their eccentricities dominate the headlines the people under them work to undermine our free healthcare and public education. Some Latín Americans think it can't happen in their country... until it happens.

As someone who spent around half my life in IT and half in humanities, there's a lot less humanities content here than in Reddit or old Twitter. You might not notice it because you might have gravitated towards the IT side of those sites but it's noticeable here

When Twitter was bought by Musk I rushed to create myself a Mastodon. My hope was that most of the interesting, thoughtful people I followed on Twitter would eventually end up on Mastodon as Musk slowly ruined the platform. I kept my Twitter up just to keep tabs on them and grab their Mastodon handles as they shared them.

In the end, around half of them created Mastodon accounts that I follow to this day. All of them are inactive now.

At the same time I noticed more and more of them creating BS accounts. I think around 80% of them ended up in it. They're still quite active in BS to this day.

I open Mastodon and BS once daily. Former rarely has new posts, latter always has.

I really wanted all of them on Mastodon. I don't trust a corpo like BS. But the particular type of crowd I followed on Twitter (progressive essayists/humanities people, game journalists, artists, non-dev hobbyists, etc) seems to have mostly gone to BS, stayed on Twitter, gone to Cohost or back to Tumblr, or abandoned social media. I did find some interesting people active on Mastodon, mostly accesibility advocates, a couple of devs of games I loved and a few non brainrotten IT people. But the level of activity from my spheres of interest seems much higher on BS right now sadly.

I change the font and size, it snaps my brain out of "I already know this text has no errors, I've been looking at it while writing it" mode and allows it to more easily read it anew

Yeah. It's weird, almost all of these have some level of controversy. Starfield. Hogwarts Legacy and Rowling's transphobia controversies. There were attempted boycotts of Atomic Heart by Ukraine sympathizers for a variety of alleged reasons. Some lifelong fans of The Last of Us were reneging of the franchise after learning that its creator Neil Druckmann was inspired by Israel-Palestina to create TLOU and recently posted an Israel flag in his Instagram. There was controversy about Dave the Diver being considered an indie game by most casual people (and being nominated as such for awards) and further discussion about what's an indie. SIFU was criticized by journalists for negative portrayal of a foreign culture and briefly became a bit of a darling for online right-wingers that hate video game journalists. Even Baldur's Gate 3 was milked a bit as a darling by people that generally dislike current video game devs and accuse them of being lazy. I also even saw someone using solo-developed Lethal Company as a bludgeon against other developers. Only ones I don't remember seeing controversies about are Labyrinthine and Red Dead Redemption 2.

It almost feels like the classic coordinated troll-voting campaign by 4chan or whatever but those tend to have a right-wing bend and I don't know if they would've voted for Atomic Heart (I don't know if the would have voted BG3 either but I assume that one's kinda unstoppable). It's kind of weird because a couple years ago when Trump was praising Russia right-wing gamers might have voted for the Russia game to piss off liberals. But with the current wars there's a lot of right-wingers supporting Ukraine and Israel. So I don't know.

Oh, didn't know. I played it with zero microtransactions. I'm sure there's a certain way though

Games of about 10hs from before 2019?

King of Dragon Pass: Tribe management game/text adventure with illustrations. Felt it was interesting in both mechanics and vibes
Plants vs Zombies: Addictive comedy-themed tower defense
Alundra: PS1's Zelda
Gris: Atmospheric 2D puzzle platformer
Celeste: Rewarding 2D platformer with nice music
The Lion's Song: Graphic aventure light on gameplay and heavy on story and atmosphere. 4 chapters about early 20th century Austrian artists and scientists with themes like art, gender, identity, memory, society, etc.
Orwell: Keeping an Eye on You: You play as a government employee tasked with finding people deemed as terrorists by the gov by scouring their social networks. There's different ways to play it
Papers, Please: Similar to above but as a border control agent
The Banner Saga: Tactical RPG bases on viking mythology
Rebuild: Gangs of Deadville: Management of a group/colony of customizable survivors in a zombie apocalypse. Web game

These are more recent but they should require very low specs:

Roadwarden: Very well written and immersive text adventure with RPG elements. Low fantasy world, you're assigned as a roadwarden by a far away nation to a dangerous and sparsely populated wildland.
Landnama: Viking tribes settling Iceland. Plays like a well designed board game in video game form. Real time with pause.
Citizen Sleeper: Incredible cyberpunk text-heavy adventure with RPG elements and a narrative focused on being humane in a not so humane world with a not quite humane body

I've never had this problem in English nor Spanish but you made me realize those two words are very similar in Spanish too (reenumerar, remunerar)

We humans just do a bad job explaining evolution to the general public, be it at schools, by science communicators, etc. Most laypeople want to believe in evolution so in the end they just kinda think it works like magic or that it's guided by some kind of intelligence (whatever that means for them: divinity, we live in a simulation, an invisible natural algorithm that governs everything, the Universe itself as a sleeping deity, etc).

When I was explained evolution as a kid (granted, around the year 2000) they made it seem evolution was an intelligent mechanism that somehow chose the best traits for the survival of a species based on its environment, as if this invisible mechanism had somehow the ability to analyze its environment, reason creatively and predict future scenarios. It was only on my mid 20s when I happened to read an article out of curiosity that I got a bit of a more clear picture. There's gotta be a better way to explain it to laypeople: maybe that it's more of a massive, long, non-directed trial-and-error process where there's not an actual intention or intelligence, it just happens. Individuals with critically bad traits die because of those traits and the ones with better or non-harmful traits live and get to have descendants. But there's not an intelligence guiding this, it just looks like an intelligence to some of us because we humans tend to apply personification to everything.

Yep. I still value reason and particularly science as one of the important guiding principles in my life, though it can't be the only one. Empathy, for example, is incredibly important, as is being open to one's own emotions.

I was lucky to not fall into that movement as a teen though, mostly because I was outside of the US cultural sphere of influence back then I assume.

There's technically not a single wrong word with your comment in my opinion. But, respectfully, don't you feel it reads as a bit condescending and admonishing? Especially when rereading the OP and then your comment in succession. The OP said they just wanted to vent a little here but then go on to barely vent at all: they just say they 'wanted to go into “fuck all men” mode' but didn't since they know it's not true or helpful. As I read it they just felt the (understandable) initial frustration but immediately worked through that feeling like an adult.

Hey, since you asked to share wins we've had in this regard:

Not a woman, but something that has occasionally worked for me is sharing this one article. It's called The magical thinking of guys who love logic.

It sometimes works with those guys that believe that men are inherently more logical than women like the one you mentioned. Though in my experience this article is most effective with atheist men and not so much with religious men, since it has a bit of a focus on criticizing a type of militant online atheism (a superficial type of atheism I might add and one that paradoxically reproduces a sort of puritan mindset masked under progressivism, much like TERFism, sex-negative "progressives" and some other current mindsets). It also works best if the guys on question are already a bit open to criticism (or at least like to pretend they are open-minded) since the article starts with a tone of criticizing right-wing ideologies.

1) Hybrid visual novels (ie visual novels with some gameplay element, be it some basic adventure/exploration/mystery mechanics like the Ace Attorney series, RPG or Tactical RPG elements, management, deckbuilding or whatever) that have very good writing (think something like Roadwarden or Citizen Sleeper) and/or a loveable cast of characters (like Ace Attorney).

2) Sci-fi and/or fantasy books that have good writing (by which I mean not that hollow, mass-produced, repetitive, overly simple YA-style prose —don't want to offend YA lovers, I'm just tired of it). Bonus points if they have some elements of social criticism, and even more bonus points if they have very compelling worldbuilding and characters. I'm thinking of stuff like Ursula K. Le Guin's The Dispossessed, The Left Hand of Darkness and Rocannon's World, Susanna Clarke's Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, Ted Chiang's short story "Story of Your Life", most of Jorge Luis Borges' short stories, Angélica Gorodischer's Kalpa Imperial, Ann Leckie's Ancillary Justice, Dino Buzzati's short story "The Seven Messengers", Ursula Vernon's webcomic Digger, Winston Rowntree's webcomic Watching, Italo Calvino's If on a Winter's Night a Traveler, etc.

3) Logical puzzle games that have the same quality of atmosphere and setting as Return of the Obra Dinn.

4) Turn-based videogames (they can be RPGs, roguelites, management games, visual novels, text adventures or whatever else as long as it's not action-focused, based on reflexes or time-sensitive without pause) that have very strong setting, atmosphere and writing (if they don't have a traditional story, at least good writing in the occasional dialogue lines). Some preferred settings are:

Decadent worlds (like Darkest Dungeon, Dredge, Fallen London, Sunless Sea, Cultist Simulator, Book of Hours, The Shrouded Isle)
18th to 20th century history/alternate history (like The Great Ace Attorney, The Lion's Song, The Last Door, Amnesia: Rebirth, Return of the Obra Dinn)
Sci-fi in general —can be cyberpunk but not necessary— (like Citizen Sleeper, Tacoma, Soma, The Talos Principle, The Red Strings Club, Chrono Trigger, 2064: Read Only Memories, Subnautica, Stellaris)
Very current (as in 2020s or close) focused settings (like Unpacking, Orwell: Keeping an Eye on You, one night hot springs, missed messages., What Remains of Edith Finch)
Traditional and/or generic fantasy but well written (like Roadwarden, Wildermyth, Final Fantasy Tactics, Legend of Mana, The Banner Saga, Suikoden II, Terranigma, Grandia, Lunar: Silver Star Story Complete, Alundra... many of these I played young so their writing might not be as good as I remember)
Other historical/alternate history settings previous to 18th century as long as they're well written (like King of Dragon Pass, Landnama)

But I'm also open to anything I'm not used to in videogames as long as it has those elements (strong writing, setting, atmosphere), like urban fantasy/new weird/fantastic realism type of stuff like Disco Elysium, whimsical settings a la Undertale/Deltarune or ambiguous mindscapes like in Celeste and Gris.

5) Mechanically speaking, something that reaches the same heights as Slay the Spire. I don't know what it is, I've played many other deckbuilding roguelites and/or roguelites with a tree-style map chasing that same high. And some were better than others (I guess shout-out to Monster Train, FTL, Pirates Outlaws, Griftlands, Roguebook, Iris and the Giant, Dicey Dungeons, Star Renegades). But none have absorbed me like it did despite it having uninteresting (to me) writing and visuals. Maybe it was just because it was my first with those ideas.

6) I was exposed to a lot of anime/manga when I was a teen and even if I never feel like I want to watch/read most of them these years, I still have some lingering weakness for some of its tropes and aesthetics when applied to videogames. I'm talking about trainwreck-style games that are awful and strangely compelling at the same time, like Danganronpa and Zero Escape. Or, to speak of one that feels much higher quality while still having some puzzling choices, 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim. It's hard to describe this vibe (maybe "anime aesthetics, very ambitious in some ways but messy and still beholden to certain clichés, occasionally managing to be deep but usually just coasting on pseudo-philosophical anime bullshit") and I really never feel like actually playing these games but once a year or so when there comes a day I just don't feel like doing anything I don't mind laying in my bed watching full no-commentary gameplays of these kinds of games. So if you know of something similar to those I'd like to bookmark that for the future.

Can't seem to find a way to see his profile in Mastodon. I search in Mastodon for the " @dark1x@bird.makeup " in that link and nothing. I search for his name in Mastodon and there's two accounts to his name but both empty

I already checked the list someone shared in some other thread, but many of the accounts that cover games there are inactive.

As a non-American he seems decent enough going by headlines in the last couple years but then it turns out he was a Republican governor? What's with that?

Hope they are being looked after. Not all old people are saints and there's probably always a % that will take advantage of kids

Teodomo

@ Teodomo @lemmy.world

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Teodomo

Current state of EU legislation on crop breeding (from @methylcytosine on X)

I made a Microsoft Office guide back then, and I figured out I should re-up it here as well

I'm a US citizen, people in other countries, what do you think when you read stories like these about the US health care system?

Now that you have settled here on Lemmy. What is your impression of it?

Bluesky and Mastodon users are having a fight that could shape the next generation of social media

What small piece of advice you would like to give that isn't heard enough ?

Here are the winners for the steam awards 2023

Best games that can be completed in under ten hours?

Best games that can be completed in under ten hours?

What's a word you've spent a long time not using right?

What is Something Scientific that you just don't believe in at all?

fuck the manosphere

fuck the manosphere

fuck the manosphere

What are some of your, "If I like this, what else might I like" questions?

What are some active game journalists/critics/industry commentators on Mastodon?

What are some active game journalists/critics/industry commentators on Mastodon?

What are some active game journalists/critics/industry commentators on Mastodon?

I deleted my google accounts today

Are PeerTube videos watchable from Piped? + recs asked

How do you rank the JRPGs you have played writing-wise?

What are some video games that had remarkably hectic public reaction at physical stores during release day?

Arnold Schwarzenegger Was 'More Than Happy' to Give $1M to Strike Fund: “Have To Give Something Back”

What are some alternative to soulless videogame franchises?

Toddlers are put to work spreading cheer at Japanese nursing home

What is the best overall party roster of characters in a JRPG?

Fellow Latin Americans/Africans/Asians/Oceanians, what is something that Americans and/or Europeans have/do that makes no sense to you?

What are your morning routines and reset routines?

JRPG-focused channel with good/insightful writing?