cogitoergofutuo

I’m also from the US and I’ll second that this is basically correct and should be taken as an implicit assumption about most Americans if you’re looking in from the outside.

Most Americans are only presented with increasing incarceration rates as the only realistically viable way of solving most social ills. As such, there are many flavors and colors of “increase the incarceration rate” across the political spectrum, and lots of people will pick a boogeyman (drug addicts, thieves, etc.) to justify it. For those that don’t pick a boogeyman their support of increasing the incarceration rate is tied to something entirely unrelated (e.g. “My guy that supports mass incarceration is so much better than your guy that supports mass incarceration! Look at his track record on {social issue}!”)

The fact that this is the view shared by the majority is reflected in the barely-fluctuating incarceration rate and military-sized “crime fighting” budgets. It is also a fact that is reflected in who Americans continue to elect and which policies we vote to enact.

That’s cool, all manner of illegal shock content has always shown up on the chans as well, since day one. “Channer” as a term applies equally to all people in that ecosystem, even those that are reviled by the rest. :)

Yeah those videos are certainly despised by channers, what websites did they run into those videos on in the first place?

Too little too late. I left Twitter a few days ago after I saw some users complaining about animal torture videos showing up in their feeds and search suggestions, and this was on the heels of the footage of the shooting in Texas making the rounds.

It’s a completely unsurprising thing to see when you actively court channers after kneecapping content moderation.

> say there's a site that allows anyone to pirate with minimal friction with one click. Still think piracy isn't lost sales?

Say that this site is user-funded and actually buys a copy for every click. Still think piracy is lost sales?

“What if reality were different in a way that I’ve concocted specifically for the purposes of this discussion?” is a fun game!

It is not the author’s job to proactively search out and adjust for crazy interpretations of mundane sentences. That rule would be funny.

“NOAA reports record hurricane activity — BUT DON’T WORRY HAARP ISN’T INVOLVED” would be a hilarious but pointless headline.

The author of this article literally spent ~$500 on a phone.

Sometimes scientists cover the same stuff as other scientists in the interest of checking reproducibility or finding new data. Sometimes new stuff is discovered, sometimes not.

I’m still not buying that “most readers” are so familiar with that conspiracy theory that they would jump to “FBI agents have taken it upon themselves to publicly accuse the CIA in involvement in 9/11”

There is so much room for discussion about incompetence and bad systems when talking about 9/11. There was even a whole tv show with Jeff Daniels a few years ago that managed to talk about it without reading like lyrics from an Anti Flag album.

I did not interpret the headline that way. I’m not sure why someone would jump straight to that aside from the “Bush did 9/11” memes that get circulated every now and then.

> It says nothing about the CIA covering up an involvement in 9/11

The title doesn’t say that the CIA was involved in 9/11.

I’m a big fan of AT-ATs but I like AT-STs as well.

> "Best for readers" is not particularly subjective here.

This is correct. It is exactly the same amount of subjective as the word “best” normally holds. Since there has never been a reproducible measure of best-ness in any objective sense of anything linguistic, it’s squarely in the territory of subjectivity.

If by “best” you mean “understandable to virtually all readers” then “comprised of” and “composed of” are equally “best”

If best-ness is measured by something other than usefulness, then the person that decides the new set of weights with which to weigh best-ness is performing a personal and subjective act. “Orthodoxy to a standard of English as cited by me in context of the year x” does not automatically qualify something for extra best-ness points.

I will gladly entertain the issue of “comprised of” somehow lacking in accuracy with a person that is genuinely confused by its inclusion in a sentence.

An ATM machine that dispenses clout.

> It's about writing encyclopedia articles in a way that's best for their readers.

This sentence contains a load-bearing “best”. The Wikipedia editor’s contention is that they have established the canonical “best”, and it is that contention that is being scrutinized.

I am happy that you brought up accuracy _and_ precision!

Somewhat humorously I think a good chunk of the disagreements here come from people treating those concepts interchangeably. Attempts to apply mathematical reasoning to language and interpretation are doomed to fall into similar traps.

I can only speak for myself, but the actual phrase “comprised of” is the least interesting thing to discuss when it comes to this topic.

I am fascinated by a single person taking up the cause of “correcting” the language of others based off of their personal linguistic aesthetic preference.

I don’t see many people saying “I often have to stop at the words ‘comprised of’ and reevaluate the meaning of the sentence that I’m reading lest I completely misunderstand it.” This isn’t actually in practical service of clarity, it’s an exercise in preserving a sense of meaningful posterity — a deeply personal and sentimental endeavor despite what “reasons” one is able to elucidate.

That’s great example! That post is an unserious riff as a response to another post that meant to assert the correctness an individual’s personal definition of a term on what I found to be tenuous pedantic grounds.

Lol out loud!

Surely their oversight will lead to a decision about which usage to sanction.

You can submit your thoughts here!

https://www.apstylebook.com/ask_the_editors#submit_tab

I love these one-person crusades against present reality. Words mean whatever a critical mass of people want them to mean. For example, the usage of the present tense here:

"Composed of" and "consists of" are better alternatives.

is incorrect. It should read:

Composed of" and "consists of" were better alternatives.

This thread is literally a clout ATM machine for a group comprised of pedants.

> in LoZ, the requirements are the same for everyone, even if you are capable enough as a player to kill him before you collect all the gear, you can't. you have to do it all. those are rails. rails are bad.

So every other Zelda game has rails, and rails are (to you) bad. Got it.

I personally find the “rails” (being a fundamental and defining feature that distinguishes the gameplay of every Zelda game) to be a good thing.

I’m a bit confused here. You’re a fan of the Zelda series, but the “rails” that are a fundamental mechanic in every other game are “bad”? Wouldn’t that mean that BotW is the first fundamentally “good” Zelda game from your perspective?

If so, that makes sense! We are in fact talking about two different definitions of what is “a Zelda game”! For me that’s a continuation of a very enjoyable and distinct game design style that began with the NES, for others it might be “the playable character is named Link”

> The original Legend of Zelda plopped you on the map and gave you nothing. zero guidance. I consider this very good.

You literally can’t get far off the beach until you hit a specific milestone. And then the next milestone and so on. Zelda NES was very strictly linear, as was ALTTP, Ocarina, Majora, GC Wind Waker etc.

As for “handholding” I’ve never felt that way for a moment while playing e.g. Link’s Awakening or even the later titles like Oracle of Time/Seasons (Seasons was incredibly difficult but ultimately still linear!)

I personally did not find “But you can technically just go fight Ganon with a stick!” a plus. It’s about as much of a Zelda game as Zelda 2.

> I don't believe that you are talking about the same game that everyone else is.

I’m talking about the one where you wander pretty aimlessly through a big field picking up sticks and stuff and occasionally get ethered by those stone robot things on sight. It’s the one where instead of getting key items by beating many different dungeons as you progress, you get a small handful of magic powers in the first hour of gameplay and then set out to collect ingredients for soup or whatever.

> that BotW fails to handhold the player through Link's progression, is by far the game's greatest feature.

I don’t quite understand this. Did you feel like previous Zelda games “handheld” you through progression? Were you a fan of the games that came before BotW?

> absolutely 0% of the overworld (excepting the four shrines of The Great Plateau) is required to beat the game. ok maybe 0.2% because you have to travel to the castle.

Unlike every single other previous Zelda game! It’s almost like a game thats only connection to the Zelda series is the character model and name!

> it was extremely well received for good reasons.

I’m sure it was! “Universal appeal” isn’t one though, as that’s not a real thing.

> don't want to grind? Don't.

I don’t! I just uninstalled it lol

If you think about it, every company is a competitor because they’re all competing for money

Such hyperbole. Saudi Aramco is superior in every financial metric. I don’t know anyone can say this with a straight face while Aramco exists.

(Since we’re bringing up companies nobody else mentioned)

There’s probably a very high price ceiling for diehard Zelda fans! I was one myself until BotW, which in my opinion is the worst game with the Zelda name attached to it ever made.

I hope by the time they get shake off the “endless grind for crafting materials in a giant featureless grass field” high they won’t be charging an arm and a leg for a proper Zelda game.

I personally chuckled when I saw this on the front page within minutes of finding out that the new Zelda is $70.

It’s also not really serverless to begin with, because at the end of the day code is being executed on a physical device that many of us might call a “server”

I personally use search engines on a daily basis. They link me to external websites that I can trust or distrust to varying degrees depending on my prior experience with them and the amount of further research I put in.

If a person is in the habit of using a search engine like a chat bot by typing in questions AskJeeves-style and then believing what text pops up in the info cards above the ads (which are themselves above the search results), I could see how the distinction between chat bots and search engines could seem trivial.

The similarity between chat bots and search engines breaks down significantly if the user scrolls down past the info cards and ads and then clicks on a link to an external website. At that point in the user experience it is no longer like chatting with a confident NPC.