This is deeply ahistorical.

First of all, let's admit that the problem is one of the West's creation. Great Britain and the USA and all of Europe are to blame for the existence of the state of Israel. But Israel has consistently and unambigously been a settler-colonial state for its entire existence, has broken international law for its entire existence, and has been the aggressor for its entire existence. It's a religious ethno-state that exists only to commit genocide against Palestinians.

So 1940s Europe and North America are to blame for Jewish people being forced to occupy Palestinian land, but certainly Israel as a government has been nothing but horrific the whole time. This is all well documented.

I learned my anti-Zionism from Jewish Women. Israel is a monstrous state, anad you're either a bad or uninformed person if you defend them. Period, end of story.

Some creators do both. Some of my favourite people to follow are artisans that do woodworking or metalworking or interesting sorts of crafting. I love videos of old Chinese dudes making or fixing teapots and stuff.

Hard to believe that AI is going to stomp those folks out--the whole point is I want to see what a skilled human can create in the real world. My enjoyment of the content is specifically linked to the fact that a human makes it and that I could either potentially make it or buy it for myself.

I'm not trying to claim my work is IMPORTANT. I'm saying that politics is inescapable, particularly when a) money; or b) children are involved.

Just games, christ. Microsoft bought Activision-Blizzard for $70 BILLION. How is that 'not real'?

That's like saying music is 'not real' or movies 'aren't real'. Music, TV, movies, games. They're all culture. It takes a distinctly ignorant person to sit here and say otherwise.

Everything is political. If you don't think that merely existing is political, you've a) got your head buried...somewhere; and b) you're probably some affluent dude that doesn't have to consider other people.

Either way, fuck all the way off.

Like, it's deeply obnoxious to me as a game developer that you can sit and say that huge sovereign wealth funds buying up studios isn't political. That allowing huge anti-competitive mergers isn't political. That workers and their rights aren't political. That the work and art that goes into games isn't political. Even trying to stay APOLITICAL is a huge political choice and is frankly, very difficult to do. Who's allowed to play them, what we consider appropriate for kids, whether or not they cause violence (they don't, demonstrably, but it's still a political football)--these are all political questions.

Games are culture, and culture interacts with politics. Go look up something on why and when zombie movies come into vogue. The movies reflect back to us what our worries are. So too with games.

The games industry has been bigger than Hollywood for years now and you have the gall--or simplemindedness, you pick--to sit and tell me that this stuff isn't political? Man, gtfo and read a book or something. Stop wandering through life so ignorant.

I keep hearing it's great for boilerplate stuff. Okay, fair enough. But how much boilerplate code do I have to write before it becomes worth my time? I really don't spend much time bootstrapping files, and 95% of the time I'd rather just use a previous thing that *I* wrote that I know works.

Ah yes, let's ignore a huge part of the last half-century's history and pretend that prior conflicts don't translate into current detente. The ongoing size and strength of the US military contributes to the relative stability in the region because it is well understood that disruption could lead to intervention.

Oil prices are low and stable because of constant, unending, ever-threatened intervention by the USA.

Sure, just as soon as the taxpayers stop subsidizing petroleum companies. I'm okay with that solution. Let's see what the market decides when the government isn't gifting free land in protected wildlife areas and cleaning up abandoned wells and waging wars to protect oil interests in the middle east. Let's go.

100%, glad we agree on that. :)

I wonder what will happen with their other BEV. By most accounts, it's a competent vehicle, and from my research, it's currently the most affordable used non-Tesla BEV. You can pick one up for around $25k Canadian. Not cheap, but half price? Will they keep it just to keep their toe in the water?

Sure, but if we're going to gatekeep employment and advancement behind a system that rigidly demands that you work well under time pressure, a lot of people never get to find something suited to their abilities.

I myself barely made it through university because I'm terrible at taking tests. I've been successful in my industry for almost 30 years now. But I was gated by the same tests as everyone else.

Some parts of the working world are a lot more forgiving than you're giving them credit for, especially now that remote work is a thing. Over the last few years I've watched companies drop the programming test from their hiring process—including Epic—because it didn't get them the results they wanted. They accidentally selected for people who worked well under stress, but 99% of our jobs aren't like that. They got better results with interviews that involve a lot of talking to reveal the things that you know.

In Canada, someone did a study of how much it cost to administer NSERC grants (a very prestigious, large grant for doing science research) vs. how much it would cost to just give every applicant what they asked for, and it was CHEAPER to give out the money than scrutinize each grant for its worthiness. Where's the value in withholding the money? There's good science that doesn't get funded and instead bureaucrats shuffling papers eat it all up trying to understand grant applications that they're not qualified to inspect.

You will definitely get people working the system in these cases, but there's an argument to be made that more accommodation will just give better results overall. Just give EVERYONE more time on the test. 100% of people get 6 hours to write the test. The people that are now trying to 'take advantage' of the system are returned to a level playing field. The people that need that time because they're neurodivergent don't have to ask for it. You get to see if people actually learned the material. There's little practical downside.

I'm a lead programmer in the games industry, and I did not show up to meetings with low value. But that said, 50% of my time was spent on meetings and managerial duties.

Critically, I consider it my job to go to meetings so the other programmers on my team DON'T. We need to talk about the state of the game. We need to discuss mechanics and timelines and all sorts of things. But I don't want other programmers in more than a few hours of meetings a week, and most of those meeting hours should be just in our team giving and getting updates.

We were aggressive about cutting meetings that people felt had little or diminishing value. Sometimes meetings are useful for a time and then they're not. I never went to a meeting that I was invited to where I didn't feel like I needed to hear the information or present something useful. Guard your own time, no matter what level of worker you are.

But yeah, useless meetings feel terrible. I didn't feel bad about the meetings I went to because we often accomplished a lot.

Nah, the deals on used EVs are great right now; I think more people are going to start buying them up. They have low maintenance and running costs, and for around town, they're great.

There are so many goddamn F-150s on the road belonging to people that never tow a single thing or load the bed up. They're commuter cars for accountants with masculinity issues. Don't tell me that we shouldn't get these dipshits into normal cars or EVs both for the sake of the environment and road safety.

Autism is a much broader category than it used to be.

There's actually some evidence now that ADHD and Autism are on the SAME SPECTRUM, they're just different manifestations of slightly different brain wiring. For some people, it's more of an impediment, but fundamentally, the impediment is that we don't allow those people to be themselves. They might stim by flapping their hands a bit or moving around (I have ADHD, and I ALWAYS have to have something in my hands during meetings; I also 'pain stim', where I might press the tip of a paperclip against my finger. It doesn't HURT hurt and I don't break the skin, but the stimulation is something that I do basically unconciously).

Anyway, when we talk about neurodivergence, some people need little to no accommodation and some people need lots. I actually don't think having tight time limits on tests makes any sense. In my work, I get lots of time to research and figure out answers, and if I do it enough, the answers become easier to come up with. Are we trying to test whether people know things, or whether they deal with time pressure the way we think is necessary (again, for no good reason).

You gotta pay people to monitor the exams anyway, just let people have the time they need. If they get 100%, great, they know their stuff. What's the issue?

Sure, I get that, but iPad? Laptop? PC?

Is your phone the thing you're going to be doing it on? And if it is, I guess it's nice that they're making $2500 morning news devices, but it still seems a bit crazy for the price.

I like a nice big screen as much as anyone, but after years and years of owning an iPad I'm using it less and less. And I honestly can't figure out why you'd want to tote around something that big all the time. Flights, I guess? A lot of traveling? I don't begrudge anyone buying one if they want it or they actually do have a day to day use for it, but I want my phone to get SMALLER.

The only folding phone I'll consider is the flip style, to reduce the carrying size. That would be handy to me, even if the folded dimensions are much thicker than my current phone. It'll still fit in a lot more pockets than the current form factor.