They kept jacking up the prices and making the streaming services worse so I finally pulled the plug and went offline. It’s a pain in the ass, to be honest, but once it’s all set up it’s really quite nice. The only long term issue is discoverability. I feel a bit like I’m stuck with the music I have now and discovering new music and listening to it is such a hassle that I just don’t do it. That said, I no longer pay for streaming, and I like what I have, so I’m not complaining.

I can strongly recommend Plexamp, which integrates well into an existing Plex setup.

Lidarr is a great complement to an existing Arr stack. And if you’re going to host your own music, you might as well look at Sonarr and Radarr, which are so great.

The operative word there is “entirely.” We have philosophy going back thousands of years playing with the subjective nature of reality. There is some truth to this. However most of human history has been an exercise in “might makes right,” and truth was whatever the person with the biggest club said it was. Then the Enlightenment happened and it was suddenly considered virtuous to observe, document, and publish objective reality. See the early days of the conflicts with the Church to understand how uncomfortable it can make those who enjoy subjective reality suddenly being confronted with the concept of objective reality.

It’s only relatively recently (post Enlightenment) that large portions of society decided it was a good idea to disregard objective reality in journalism, science, and politics, in favour of subjective or “lived” realities. We can in part thank postmodernism for escaping academic containment, but I think that’s only part of the slide. Whatever the cause, I think it behooves all of us to attempt to steer into objectivism as frequently and clearly as possible. Depending on the metric, Western society has arguably never been this polarised. If we can’t agree on the definition of words, we aren’t even speaking the same language anymore. Our North Star needs to be shared language so at the very least we can have valid arguments with each other. That is how we progress.

I agree. Games feel like they’re designed by committee now (very much likes movies, in fact). I recall SkillUp’s criticism of Veilguard’s writing as, “every interaction feels like HR is in the room.” This nails so many design choices today. Safe and vanilla is boring. There are of course people who believe that nothing should ever be remotely challenging or offensive to anyone ever, but I just don’t think they represent the majority of gamers. Attempting to please them at the expense of the much larger player-base is clearly not working.

Howard has reportedly been championing procedurally generated content for years or perhaps decades. We saw echoes of this in Starfield. The result is quite expected: boring and vanilla. Especially when contrasted with Bethesda’s previously great storytelling with intricate characters and hand-crafted experiences. We see once again with Kingdom Come Deliverance 2 how important that is. Yes, it’s time consuming and expensive, but it’s clearly loved by customers and critics.

Compounding this was Starfield’s mediocre writing. It took a clear and obvious dive from previous games. It felt incredibly safe. I wouldn’t be surprised if some of it was AI generated.

I’ll preface this by saying I am/was a Reddit user since its first year operating in 2005/2006.

The notion that reality is entirely subjective is relatively new and I believe has led to a myriad of consequences across society from social media to journalism to politics. Even if we will never arrive at a future in which we can all acknowledge what a spade is, we should absolutely continue to strive for that. Common understanding is the bedrock of liberal societies. We need it for science and democracy to function.

The “Redditquette” the user above explained was the notion that disagreement isn’t invalid. By this I am referring to the philosophical distinction between valid and invalid arguments. For example:

1. Every dog is a reptile.
2. Every reptile is cold-blooded.
3. Therefore, every dog is cold-blooded.

This argument is silly and easily disproved, but valid. Flat Earthers often make valid but easily disproved arguments, and there is much to gain in the world by people having valid discussions with one another. Especially from a curious and open position.

On the other hand, invalid arguments are those in whose conclusion is not proven by its premises. That is, even if all the premises are true, the conclusion could still be false. For example:

1. Being friendly is the easiest way to make friends quickly.
2. Alana has a lot of friends.
3. Therefore, Alana must be very friendly.

The argument tells us that being friendly is one way to make friends, but is that the only way? And does having a lot of friends necessarily mean that you are very friendly? Although Alana might be very friendly, the author hasn’t proven that she is. There is nothing to gain by engaging with this, other than to potentially educate someone about valid and invalid arguments. However this rarely works out well over the internet. This is an opinion masquerading as reason or fact. Trolling uses some variation of this.

Reddiquette was intended to encourage healthy discussion without immediately devolving into insults and death threats. It actually worked really fucking well, for many years. In the early days, the administrators would enforce Rediquette, as crazy as that sounds. They would give out warnings for people downvoting earnest comments and submissions. Some of the better moderated subreddits still maintain a shadow of this, but they don’t have the tools to see who is up/downvoting what.

Unfortunately there is some game theory in this. If the rules are “downvote what you don’t like,” then both sides of any debate must use this rule, or their comments will be permanently hidden, and their ideas will never propagate. The evidence is that this rule is quite devastating for online discourse, and I miss old Reddit.

No, please, continue to support my arguments. I very much appreciate it.

I don’t know what you think you’re proving with that link. Do you think I’m arguing that political advertising isn’t real? Because I never argued that. Cambridge Analytica scraped a lot of Facebook data, and it is claimed they used that data to advertise to potential voters. So what? That’s how democracy works: convincing potential voters of the righteousness of your cause. Are you arguing that people should no longer be allowed to debate and inform each other in a democracy?

I’m not sure if you read your sources but you are only corroborating what I argued. It’s a lot of empty talk. None of them are willing to act. Take the example of the border security. It’s theatre. Even if an illegal immigrant is stopped, they still have the right to reside in the country for many years, and indefinitely if they refuse to leave in most circumstances. All of this is paid for by German citizens. I can’t believe you would use the Greens as an example of a party getting tough on immigration. They have zero policies to reduce immigration.

To summarise your sources: not a single party is willing to act on immigration. Don’t be surprised when people vote for parties which will.

Yes? But what does this have to do with immigration?

I’m not making that link. The user above argued Brexit was caused by appeasement. I was addressing that specific claim.

I generally side against the neoliberals. In this case, they have been tirelessly fighting for globalisation and high immigration. Like all economic policies, it comes with some good and some bad. It has certainly resulted in a lot of top line wealth generation. The problem is that most of it has been accrued at the top. This is not sustainable. I think this is why we are seeing a general backlash to globalisation: the experiment hurt a lot of middle and lower class people.

Spending X on advertising will increase your product sales by Y.

Because it exposes products to customers who were otherwise unaware of their existence or features, not because advertising has special brainwashing powers.

I think there is an implied argument you are making that unless people vote the “correct” way, they’re misinformed. I think some people just have different priorities. They care about different things and for this reason, consume different media. I was horrified to learn my wife clicks on ads when she’s shopping. Apparently that works for her. It doesn’t mean she’s wrong. Just that she’s not as rigorous about her selection process because she’s ultimately happy with the outcome.

Popper’s paradox of tolerance gives in my view pretty clear guidelines on what to protect and what not to tolerate. I believe that if we held onto that, fascism would have a much harder time.

Popper did make his line clear: physical violence.

“I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be most unwise But we should claim the right to suppress them if necessary even by force; for it may easily turn out that they are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but begin by denouncing all argument they may forbid their followers to listen to rational argument, because it is deceptive, and teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols.”

So I agree with you. Tolerate up to the point of people using physical violence to enact their political aims.

I think you are falsely equating the choice not to seek out new knowledge with the belief that the adverts one sees on TikTok are all correct. I understand you believe the latter is a serious problem. I just do not. I have much more respect and faith in the average person.

No. Advertising exists to inform people about products and services. I do not subscribe to the notion that advertising can convince an average voter to vote against their best interests or contra to facts. Not in a Western society in which one can easily obtain the facts on the internet. This might be true in a country like China where the internet is tightly controlled and facts aren’t easy to obtain.

Brexit happened because successive neoliberal governments ground low and middle class workers into dust. The two party system provided no alternative to voters than the two neoliberal governments. So when voters got the chance, they burned a cherished institution to the ground in protest. The issue here is decades of neglecting the wellbeing of citizens, and I’m dismayed that you would argue the issue might be actually listening to voters for the first time in generations. It is the exact opposite that is needed in the UK and around Europe.

I don’t think that’s accurate. You can see voter turnout for the 2015 and 2019 elections here. It’s true that some voters went to KF and Nye Borgerlige, but even more voters went to RV and SF. I think you are right to argue it caused more people to vote for parties further on the left and right, but the far left appears to be the aggregate winner.

I have, and I think you are wrong. However both of us are using very vague words like “appeasement” and I’m beginning to think we’re not using the same definitions. We might be remembering the facts which align with our narrative and ignoring those which do not. The truth might lie somewhere in between.

That’s probably a fair and nuanced take. Perhaps some voters are swayed by TikTok ads. I suppose I believe this contingent is small and inconsequential, while the person above believes it is large and consequential. Perhaps my perception is coloured by my belief in the principles of free speech. I think it is essential to the functioning of a democracy, and for science. Free speech only exists if we protect speech we don’t like. I grow very uneasy with equivocating over which political dissent is allowed. History has taught us that it is inevitably used for nefarious purposes eventually.

Voters are not asking for temporary border patrols. They want lasting solutions. This is at best political theatre because even if an illegal immigrant is detected, they are still permitted to apply for asylum and will be given free accommodation for many years at minimum. The CDU reduced refugee benefits by less than 4%. They retain all their other benefits like free and subsidised housing, free medical care, free education, and free daycare in most states and very cheap in all others. These measures are not addressing the root cause. They aren’t going to make any lasting change. The social benefit change was only enacted last month. It’s far too little, far too late. As long as incumbents refuse to listen to the needs of voters, the AfD will continue to gain in popularity.

Apparently telling voters “no” is working terribly because right wing parties keep rising in polls. The evidence directly contradicts your claim. I don’t see how Brexit was caused in any way by appeasement. If anything, Brexit was caused by derision and dismissal, leaving low socioeconomic voters in particular no other way to vent their anger than by burning an institution to the ground. If you don’t give voters what they want they will vote extremists into power, or vote for extreme solutions out of spite.

Broadly speaking I find the argument of telling voters “no” in a democracy absurd and authoritarian.

No, but I don’t believe voters are mindless drones which vote for whatever they are told to. Do you? This contempt for voter agency is a major reason the AfD is polling so well.