A true champion of free speech. 🙄

I love the idea, but I can’t see it actually working. Developers would just sell even more games as subscriptions instead of selling licenses, regardless of any interactive online content or lack thereof. (Think of EA’s 2013 release of SimCity with always-on DRM, for example.) Then when they want to shut their servers down, they just stop selling subscriptions and wait until the last one expires.

Oh nooooooes, a disaster!!!

🙄🙄🙄

Congrats!! 🥳

No, really, I used to end with negative scores all. the. time. 😅

not supplying them to Ukraine gives russia an advantage, thus being against the US supplying them to Ukraine is de-facto a pro-russian stance.

I strongly disagree with you here. I’m not against providing any weapons to Ukraine, I just believe there are better options than cluster munitions — options which won’t still be killing civilians in the decades to come. I don’t believe that cluster munitions are in any way essential to Ukraine’s defence.

Ukraine and its allies can’t do anything (short of surrendering, which I certainly don’t advocate) to stop Russia’s use of them, and there will be long-term consequences. But that doesn’t make it a good — or even neutral — idea to add on additional long-term consequences. The more unexploded ordinance, the more danger to residents in the future.

I read this more as a condemnation of the US (as opposed to Ukraine) for enabling further use of an indiscriminate weapon that will have civilian consequences for decades to come. But alas, it’s what I expect from those warmongers to our south. 😔

What, you don’t think a self-professed “former therapist” is an expert on infectious disease and vaccine development??? 😂

I do have to agree that the medical and scientific community’s consensus shouldn’t be “beyond reproach”, but only because the scientific method requires being open to new evidence that shows past theories to be flawed. (Key word evidence.)

Alas, a common tactic for spreading misinformation can be summed up as “a mosquito doesn’t care if the window is only open by an inch or all the way, it’ll fly inside regardless.”

Mod chips used to be necessary for playing games on CD-R, but now that can be done with just a 4-in-1 cartridge using the PseudoSaturn hack. My recollection is that Saturn mod chips only defeat the copy protection check and you’d still need another solution (like the 4-in-1 cart) for disabling the region-lock.

PS2 defaults to 4:3, digital out can be things besides HDMI, and the vast majority of 360 consoles sold had HDMI out. If you want to draw the line elsewhere, no big, do your thing, there’s no one True answer to OP’s question… but your comment feels like whataboutism to me and adds nothing of value.

In my view, systems without an HDMI output or which default to a 4:3 aspect ratio are retro. But I don’t expect everyone else to share this opinion, and that’s totally fine. 🙂

Don’t worry, Google is bluffing. They don’t want other countries to do anything similar so they have to make a big show of fighting it, but their massive power to fight it is exactly why C-18 is necessary. Google backed down in Australia, and sooner or later, they’ll back down here — there’s still a lot of money for them to rake in even after paying to use the news outlets’ work.

Direct link to the PDF: https://segaretro.org/images/8/8c/SegaFY1997BrandReview_US.pdf

Even if you do specifically have gender dysphoria, jumping to gender affirming care is radical. It’s not how we treat any other kind of disordered thinking

Gender Dysphoria is not disordered thinking. That’s exactly why the name was changed in DSM-5 (formerly Gender Identity Disorder in DSM-IV). Or if you prefer, it’s exactly why ICD-11 renamed it to Gender Incongruence and moved it out of the “Mental, Behavioural, and Neurodevelopmental Disorders” section. Shouldn’t a former therapist commenting on the issue know that?

Does Gender Dysphoria present alongside disordered thinking? Quite often! But that doesn’t invalidate one’s gender identity. Transition didn’t make my F33.2 Major Depressive Disorder, Recurrent Severe magically go away, but it sure is easier to cope with and treat these days. (Well, I guess it’s 6A71.3 now that ICD-11 is out.)

I think people who can only find relief for their dysphoria by transitioning should be allowed to

And there we have it: the core of the argument you’re making is that people should only be allowed to transition if a gatekeeper is satisfied it’s the only way they can get relief. And the only way to “show” that is to suffer more and more — unnecessarily! — until someone like you finally believes them, which might never happen. Do you believe trans people genuinely have the gender we say we do? If so, withholding treatment is simply cruel. Or do you not believe us and just think it’s okay for us to “pretend” if nothing else works? That’s not real acceptance.

There is no medical reason not to try more traditional forms of therapy and medications before pursuing the less understood and riskier treatments.

Scientists still don’t fully understand how antidepressant medications work. They come with a black-boxed warning (the strongest kind) in the US, and similarly strong warnings in the Canadian product monographs. Benzodiazepines commonly used for anxiety disorders can be extremely risky. Puberty blockers and hormone treatments are better understood and carry less risk in many cases.

I very much wish the LGBT community could try to understand where moderates like myself are coming from.

Oh, believe me, we understand exactly where you’re coming from… quite possibly better than you do. You’re only fooling yourself with that “moderate” label.

And that’s why I wrote this reply out for the bystanders — it’s not actually for you.