(For the most part, excepting those I haven’t played the main questline end-to-end.)

SSSS: X
S: VII, XIV, XVI
A: XIII, XII, Tactics, FFTA, VIIR, VIIR-2
B: VI, IX, XIII-2, Type-0
C: VIII, IV, Crystal Chronicles, Dissidia, X-2, LR: XIII, Bravely Default
F: Crystal Chronicles S, the Android port of FFT

I love everything I’ve listed at C… for me, that just means “interesting ideas that I really love and hope they’ll revisit, but that ultimately didn’t land for me as a game in the form it was released in.” And yes, Bravely Default is a Final Fantasy game imho.

[Sorry for continually editing this, the Markdown formatting keeps giving me issues.]

Both can be true? He said some mildly pro-queer-rights stuff pretty soon before that all happened, and it’s clear that Grimes calling him out and his daughter disowning him got under his skin. That’s not to defend, not even slightly; rather, the shift in targets and more explicit right-wing affiliation definitely go along with him being (and I wish I could remember who coined this) the most divorced man on the planet.

The moral failings were already there, but now he’s found a big glowing target for his tantrums, unfortunately for us queer folks.

Yes and no. Even in living memory, the Southern Strategy goes all the way back to the 60s, and explicitly identifies opposition to the civil rights movement as a conservative goal. Going all the way back to the Civil War, it’s undeniable how much the economy of the United States is built on slavery — opposing slavery is thus also an economic argument.

Point being, I don’t think there was some time in the past where economic policy could be so cleanly separated from racial justice, gender equality, queer rights, disability advocacy, and other things that are now seen as “polarizing.” Every economic debate is, I would posit, at least to some significant degree a proxy for a much more critical human rights debate.

I understand the limitations, but please consider the signal that sends — that it’s OK to rip off art if you do it at scale, and that the climate impact is no big deal. Especially for new communities, that tells folks right off the bat to stay away.

Is that an AI generated picture for the post?

I mean, the trouble is that voting for Democrats does literally support genocide, if only because every president and presidential candidate in modern history has promised and/or enacted genocidal policies. When talking about US politics and genocide, the bar is so low, it’s in hell.

The nuance to all of the above is that voting for Republicans supports genocide even more. It’s entirely valid to vote for less genocide amongst several genocidal options, and also to call said genocide out.

That’s fair, yeah. I ran into that a little while ago only having read 903.11 and not realizing the contradiction; people got a bit irate with me, even though it was an honest mistake. Ah, well.

Even aside from potential or actual bias, there’s a pretty wide gap between bias and the incitement that the Israeli government is accusing Al Jazeera of. I don’t have to fully endorse the entirety of Al Jazeera’s coverage to think that shutting them down and criminalizing them is a pretty huge overreach.

It’s also a question of methods; a giant company simply ignoring an unjust law is typically a pretty poor way to challenge it (as always, there are exceptions). To the extent that Australia is claiming that Musk sees himself as above the law, that’s a pretty accurate charge, that holds whether the particular law in question is just or not.

Shorter version: fuck Musk, and also fuck countries claiming they can order takedowns beyond their borders. Both can be true at once.

It’s absolutely better than the alternative, but I always feel like that kind of support comes with a caveat or implicit limit. Even in that ad, the narrator still argues for “parent’s rights” as an alternative to “big government,” rather than emphasizing his parental responsibilities.

I am 100% and unreservedly glad, though, to see that the organization itself is founded by a trans woman (https://www.lib.ncsu.edu/news/main-news/alaina-and-kathy-brennan-kupec-endow-transgender-positive-collection).

4 5 6

It may indeed be, I’m not familiar with Middle East Monitor, but Media Bias/Fact Check are themselves rather infamously biased towards the American right wing. For example, they list the New York Times as nearly as left-biased as their scale goes, despite that the Times has largely taken the Republican party line on a number of issues, such as queer rights (their deceptive coverage of trans rights has been a large part of the current moral panic, and has led to multiple open lettersof protest). The Times was even instrumental in elevating Trump to the presidency with their incredibly dubious decision to give Comey’s procedural memo front page placement and a misleading headline mere days before the election — a choice that Nate Silver has said was possibly deciding on the election. The Guardian is also listed as left-center despite even more extreme transphobic editorial decisions than even the Times.

Similarly, they list MSNBC as far-left, despite them having Republican-led shows and frequent Republican guests. I’ll definitely agree there’s some degree to which they’re on the left, but it’s pretty minor all told. The idea that they’re far left is just ridiculous, and one that only makes sense from the perspective of America’s right-wing culture.

At the same time, they list Wall Street Journal as mostly credible, something that just isn’t a serious take on media credibility.

(Edited to add: a lot of this comes down to the very strong bias in American media towards the “both sides” idea that if two sources disagree, the truth must be in the middle. That bias is especially clear in discussions of climate change, but it’s also prevalent in discussions of other political issues more generally.)

Artists, like all laborers, should be fairly compensated for their work. The idea that love of art should necessarily come into conflict with fair compensation is a primary vehicle for continuing the exploitation of creative labor.

That is somewhat orthogonal to the issue of piracy, though. Some of the most strongly anti-piracy platforms out there are also absolutely terrible in terms of labor rights (hence the current strikes in Hollywood, for instance). It’s notable that in this case, the studio seems to be saying fairly explicitly that piracy is indeed not the main obstacle to fair compensation, such that no conflict between their stance and labor rights needs to exist.

Take LGBTQ+ rights. Hell, even narrow down to trans rights. One side finds people like me inconvenient to talk about, the other wants us to be denied all medical care despite the disastrous effects that has on suicide rates (eso amongst trans kids). What is the “balanced” perspective there? What’s the “center” view that you’re striving to achieve using your stochastic parrot engines?

Even if LLMs did what you claim they did (they don’t), your stated objectives are reprehensible and, if successful, will get people killed.

Finding “AI” inaccuracies is the least surprising thing in the world. Given how LLMs work and their extremely well-documented failures to produce accurate information, the burden of proof lies squarely on “AI” vendors to show the accuracy of their products. To say that they have thus far failed to do so is… generous.

None of this snake oil should be touching news.

In almost four years playing, I think I saw a slur exactly once, reported it, and it was blocked? I get it’s not perfect, but FFXIV has been pretty good so far in my experience.

Congratulations! Also, if you haven’t done so already, getting a nice bra is a true joy.

By the devs of Life Is Strange, if I recall? It’s definitely got some problems, but also some really novel ideas that I’m glad they came back to in later games.

While we’re mentioning Final Fantasy, I’d be remiss to not point out the whole FFXIII trilogy. I know it’s controversial, but Lightning, Serah, Fang, and Vanille are all really great characters.

There’s that, absolutely, but I also think a lot of folks making the argument that Biden did it too don’t actually believe the argument — it’s just empty words they can use to shift the argument away from Trump.