paultimate14

But would sovcits even register? Or would they just show up to the polls to harass workers with a bunch of made-up pseudo-legalize documents they found on the Internet?

Not a big enough age gap for lib-right

It feels as though there's a cycle with waves of this kind of junk. Stuff that consumers really don't want but companies are so convinced are revolutionary they try to shove it everywhere

3D TV's were pushed, but not that hard. Cryptocurrency had a brief moment in the sun where it looked like it might be viable. There's smaller things like physical buttons being replaced by capacitive and eventually touch screens on everything from phones to appliances to cars (it seems Apple might be reversing that). There's been a huge push away from digital media, but 80% of PS5's sold have been the disc drive version and the markets for DVD's and Blu-Rays seems to be heating up despite stores saying they are going to stop carrying them. There's probably a lot more I can't remember.

Companies have been shifting away from meeting consumer demand and towards trying to shape consumer demand themselves instead. I blame the Marketing industry- with the rise of the Internet, TV, and even cheap printed materials over the past couple hundred years. It's so easy to make a new brand that there's no incentive to maintain a reputation anymore. Craftsman is a famous example.

The power has shifted to investors. Announcing AI integration makes the stock price go up. We saw the same thing with crypto a few years ago- the most famous example is probably the Long Island Iced Tea Corporation changing it's name to Long Blockchain Corporation and getting a stock price boost without actually changing their operations or products at all.

We will buy what our oligarch overlords decide to sell us and we will be grateful to them for the privilege.

That's a good point. I've decided I'm not going to vote for Obama.

Tragic that someone so old still has to work a drive through to make ends meet

Crazy how the HC with the most Superbowl trophies has had a reputation fall off so hard.

The bad Browns tenure I can chalk up to the Browns just being a bad organization. The Jets incident was more funny than anything else. But then the cheating scandals kept coming and putting asterisks on those wins. The question of whether Brady or Bellichek was more important loomed over the franchise. Matt Cassell had a decent year in 2008 that suggested it might be Bellichek, but the question was pretty solidly answered with "Brady" when he went on to win another one with Tampa and have a couple of good years there while Bellichek floundered without him and was eventually let go.

He was a terrible GM. So many bad contracts and bad draft picks. Brady's willingness to play for less could only go so far to fix that. Despite going under .500 in 3 of his last 4 seasons he left the cupboards bare.

His coaching tree is almost a meme for his bad it is. Matt Patricia, Josh McDaniels, Eric Mangini, Romeo Crennel, Jim Schwartz, Joe Judge, and more have been anywhere from some of the worst coaches in the league to maybe mediocre at best.

There are a couple of guys with potential still. Flores really got screwed by the Dolphins and seems to be on a path to getting another shot, but how much credit does Bellichek deserve? Do Tomlin and O'Connell get credit (although I suppose you could argue O'Connell should be part of Bellichek's tree from his time as a backup QB?). Daboll... Idk what's going on in New York but I wouldn't be shocked if they make a change there within the next couple of years. Mayo is just getting his first shot here so maybe there is hope for him. Bill O'Brien I thought was a good coach and terrible GM for the Texans.

And now here he is trying to absolve himself of culpability for the terrible team he left behind in New England. He should have retired when Brady left- could've rode off into the sunset as a hero and no one would've cared if he left behind a roster full of holes in the 2020 covid season.

I'm trying to verify these numbers and I'm not finding much.

The closest I can find to a source is that these were claims from Moshe Elad in articles in Tablet Magazine and Algemeier.

In Mashal's case, he was the treasurer of Hamas at the time and Elad seems to be just attributing the entirety of the organization's assets to him personally.

I'd be really interested to see if anyone else can find more concrete proof of this claim than I could.

Except that's not the whole story.

The song was co-written by Victor Willis (the lead singer) and Jacques Morali (their producer). Originally, executive producer Henry Belolo was also credited, but his name was later removed after lawsuits.

Willis is straight (as far as I can tell publicly in any case) and has indeed claimed that the song is simply about the YMCA and has nothing to do with gay culture.

However, Morali is gay. He was essentially the founder of the group and has been quite explicit that the group was created to because he "[wanted to do something only for the gay market"](wanted to do something only for the gay market). The name "Village People" is a reference to Greenwich Village, a gay community.

So we have 2 writers credited. One of whom was the singer who was hired on and later left while the group continued in without him, who claims the song was not about gay people at all. The other was gay, was basically the founder, and has been explicit about how the whole project was intended to target gay people all along.

So I suppose every listener needs to judge for themselves. But my own conclusion is that it's 100% about gay culture, just like most of the rest of their catalog. I could only speculate as to why Willis wants to distance himself from that.

Maybe he never expected to become a gay icon and was never comfortable with it. Maybe he's trying to to make sure that the song appeals to the largest market possible for the sake of getting more royalties. Or maybe there's something else going on.

Yeah it sounds like something mainstream media would accuse TST of doing. Like, I strongly suspect that most of the "movements" to include pedophiles in diversity conversations are really just bigots astroturfing because that just makes more sense.

And I still think it's worth supporting TST just for the legal work they do alone.

Oh I remember seeing that in development a while back when I looked up what the BioShock devs were up to. I didn't realize it released!

Another similar game in my backlog is Vale: Shadow of the Crown. Except instead of having a visual flash, the game relies entirely on audio cues to play and is completely blind-accessible. So completely different, but somehow feels like the same realm.

I'll admit I've never been a member of either organization, but I have friends who were TST members and last year a good chunk of that congregation split off to join GoS. And they've since helped others so the same. So this is basically how they've described it to me.

From Wikipedia, it looks like GoS started in 2018 as a UK split-off for various concerns. Wikipedia focused on specific issues the UK branch had, but I was also told a huge factor was the logistics and goals. TST is a very US-focused organization that puts a lot of resources into US legal battles. They also had strict controls over branding, policies, and structures that just didn't suit them.

The main reason for the schism in my local chapter was more specific. TST regularly streams online services and last year had a leader from a chapter who advocated for welcoming, accepting, and celebrating people regardless of sexual preference. Which sounds great..., except he also explicitly called for the inclusion of pedophiles as part of LQBTQ+. Despite pedophilia being in direct opposition to tenents 1 and 3. The local chapter (and several other chapter) complained to their national representatives and the response was... Nothing. No statement from the national organization, no consequences for that leader. Just swept under the rug.

Also of significance was allegedly there was some sort of documentary released in 2023 called "The Lies of the Satanic Temple" by Dead Domain that claims to expose fraud and abuse from TST leadership. I have not watched it (although coincidentally I have watched a couple of her videos on videogames- she had a really interesting interview with the creators of Paradise Killer), but I heard that it caused several other congregations across the country to split off of TST.

GOS is much less centralized. It's more of a collection of guidelines, resources, and suggestions. Some chapters keep their own branding, like the House of Heretics in Seattle.

From an outsider's perspective, it seems to me like GOS is more focused on replacing the role of the church in an individual's life with a secular alternative. They do charity work like adopt-a-highway, food drives, clothing drives, etc. A lot of the members are young, queer, alternative people, and if their families disowned them they don't have a support system. They have support for things like non-religious sobriety programs. I almost get the impression it's like a religious rehab for people who grew up in very restrictive or abusive churches. At Pride this year the local chapter was doing "un-baptisms". They have potlucks and parties and other social events. I think some of these things they might have carried over from TST.

They keep a much lower profile than TST. They don't engage in the legal battles that TST does, and a lot of the people I know who left TST still respect the organization for fighting that fight. Personally... I'm really confused as to why GOS still keeps the "satanic" imagery of TST because I thought the point of that was to serve as a counterpoint to Christians in those legal battles.

Personally I'm just introverted and not interested in all that "community" and "networking". But I've donated to both organizations for the work they do.

Edit: in the interest of fairness I've seen claims that the Dead Domain documentary has been debunked.

I actually love this in videogames. It's a really cool way to interact with the environment and literally see the world through a different lense with a level of control that no other medium of storytelling can achieve.

Maybe this dude should go watch a movie if he doesn't want to interact with things.