The Open Thread is a place for open discussion among my readers. Post anything you feel like sharing! From now on, the Open Thread will no longer be monthly. Instead, there will be a new Open Thread whenever it is adequate. The stage is yours. Go ahead!
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Cracker Barrel is panicking, reverting their recent DEI-friendly and utterly bland corporate design:
https://archive.ph/SVLeN
Of course, online racists are quick to point out that the CEO, Julie Felss Masino, is Jewish:
https://archive.ph/wTgzk
I am not sure why this would be relevant, though.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hxmThxhKKA0
Does anyone else here watch Hoe_Math from youtube from time to time? Honestly, I think he’s the closest thing we’ve got to a “modern/mainstream Aaron Sleazy”. Pretty sure Alek was the first one ever to share one of his content here.
The only reason I don’t watch his longer videos is that my attention is focused elsewhere right now. I really should get to it soon though. Who knows when woke youtube will kick him out of the platform. I don’t know if it’s just me, but I think some of his old videos might not be there anymore. Well, at least he’s got his own website now.
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/B9tPrR8jGn0
Another good pair bonding analogy!
I want to point out a major contradiction in feminism. Some of their biggest problems with the 1950s is the house wives of the era were addicted to pharmaceuticals and alcohol. As well as domestic violence.
Oh yes, feminists. We have solved those problems since you started working for corporations. I’ve read that women currently drink as much as men. Popping pills is at an all time high. And almost eliminated domestic violence.
Do you have to be brain dead to qualify as a feminist?
*Certainly have NOT eliminated domestic violence. But increased female on male domestic violence. I had a coworker that had a huge scar on his bicep that resulted from that.
Reports of housewives taking drugs and drinking copious amounts of alcohol are surely fiction much more than fact. Social drinking was quite common in this environment but even that was at a much lower scale than what you nowadays see among “young professional women” in big cities.
Exactly. Any increase in drug addiction in the 1950s had nothing to do with boredom of house wives. It had everything to do with advancements in medicine, and access to health care, due to the growth of the American middle class. Something these liberals ostensibly support.
Are people more sane working for corporate
assholes, than for their families/homesteads?
Today’s pharmaceuticals are much stronger today as well.
Oh, I almost forgot. Top lobbyists in Washington:
Big Pharma. Even stronger than fucking AIPAC. Yeah, feminism really kicked the drug habit.
American Chad and model, while visiting Germany, scarred for life by doctor/engineer for white knighting. Man’s career may have been put on hold, but this is the price the West must pay for the cure for cancer: https://youtu.be/QOh0yFYFN6U
How many hate crime counts has he been charged with?
Maybe he can share a cell with Boudica, who committed the crime of refusing to let herself and her sister be r-ped. (If you’re actually r-ped, that carries a longer sentence because it incites more anger at doctors and engineers.)
Meanwhile, over in the opinion column: why are modern men such cowards who refuse to protect strong empowered women from what they voted for?
The collective conscious/unconscious is clearly mentally ill.
What do you guys think of Nick Fuentes? He seems to be making a miraculous comeback lately. He’s been banned from everywhere, but lately I’ve seen him platformed a lot on YouTube by third parties. Especially (and incredibly) by black people.
Is he the real deal, or some kind of psyop?
I don’t know a ton about him except I remember him years ago from when he hung out with Kami Kat Boi or whatever his name was. Then I forgot all about him until recently, as he seems to have been getting a ton of attention lately. I was under the impression that all the prominent right-wingers were rallying against him recently, like Candace Owens, Tucker and Milo—even Elon Musk. For this reason I’m tempted to believe that the above list of figures are more likely to be psychological operators rather than Fuentes, but I suppose it’s possible he still is. It seems like they’ve tried to do everything to shut this guy up except for killing him.
Had a blackpilling moment just a bit ago when I read a statistic saying that gen A in the USA is 40% white, so we’re done basically. I doubt there’s any coming back from that, although I suspect there will be more and more instances of racial segregation in the future and perhaps mostly white communities.
Valve’s console “Fremont” specs have apparently leaked. If specs are accurate, would be probably less powered than a PS5, but still promising considering the gigantic library Steam has access to.
The specs arms race is no longer relevant. Harcore games get a PC anyway. Even with PS4 specs you can get graphics that are “good enough” for most people, in particular if you use a 1080p monitor. Most interestingly, the majority of playtime these days is on legacy games like Counter Strike, League of Legends, Roblox, Minecraft, or GTA V. None of these games need a powerful machine to run well.
I recently read two twitter conversations where the typical left wing view is that if a parent is very conservative and strict then the children will rebel and become very left wing, take drugs, sleep around, etc
Do you think this is true?
If you want a chaste and conservative daughter – how should your parenting style be?
I have a hard time seeing this. Normally, strict parenting leads to well-behaved children and functioning adults. On a related note, do these leftists also think that raising a child without setting any boundaries lead to the kid becoming right-wing? If not, what are the actual root causes? As we are talking about leftists, the premise is that genes have no impact at all and anybody can be anything. This is a great example of the left engaging in what they so commonly accuse others of: “providing simple/simplistic explanations”. To throw another lefitst phrase at these people, there is “a lot to unpack” here. Too bad that these human automatons are unable to do that due to their ideological blinders.
If you want a chaste and conservative daughter, step one is to not have children with a whorish mother, and step two is to control the peer group during her formative years. Lastly, you need to marry her off to a conservative man while she is still young.
I think Sleazy cannot relate to your experience because he was raised in a relatively violent free environment, but I can relate to you. I have no grudge against my parents either. My mom used to beat me many times, but always with sticks on the butt. My dad rarely beats me, first he uses belt to beat me, but later change to stick.
Most of the times we feel scared, sad and guilty for saddening our parents, but never have a strong vindication against them. I used to have an uncle who takes care of me throughout my childhood, and I was really beaten badly, being chased around and beated him. As I was a teenager, I had harbour a thought of fighting back, but could not because I was weak. But as an adult, I hold no grudge of him, absolutely not. He passed away a few years ago.
I do think it depends on the personality of the child, and your parents’ parenting style.
Thanks Aaron. I fully agree with you. Thinking about it – probably leftists make up the whole narrative to trick conservatives. That is because leftists want children to not grow up conservative.
@CQV: I wasn’t talking about hitting or spanking your children. I wouldn’t do that. I am talking about setting strict rules and boundaries (for example, no boyfriends or drinking or partying or sleeping at friends place).
Aaron,
“Normally, strict parenting leads to well-behaved children and functioning adults.”
Do you think that kids who grow up in really strict, highly controlled or moralistic environments later embrace a more hedonistic behaviors going in the opposite direction later in life – like partying, drinking, or casual sex — almost as a way of reclaiming autonomy or identity? How strict is too strict where kids later rebel against their parents?
I think that ultimately it is largely a matter of genetics. A common phenomenon is that people enjoy a period of debauchery, but clearly not all, and not even all who could easily do so. This is not really a matter of “reclaiming autonomy” as this would imply that hedonism is the ultimate goal of human existence. You can build an identity around anything, not just hedonism. Also note that children rebelling against their parents is a Western phenomenon that was unknown before 1968. There is a large-scale psy-ops going on that tells children that they have to rebel against their parents, take drugs, and have sex indiscriminately (I wonder who is behind it). In contrast, go back 100 to 200 years ago and you may be surprised that teenage boys took up apprenticeships, if they did not prepare for university studies, and apparently lived with a greater sense of responsibility than the typical Western man and woman in their mid-20s.
Aaron,
So, how much freedom should parents give their kids?
As a parent, your duty is to ensure that your child has the freedom to make certain experiences, but within safeguards, i.e. utter stupidity like letting your 13-year-old daughter “sleep over at a friend’s place” or being fine with her getting wasted every weekend is certainly not a good idea. In addition, you lead by example, so if you neither smoke nor drink nor take drugs, your child will not grow up thinking that getting wasted is the essence of being human.
@Aaron
“I wonder who is behind it.”
LOL
Berlin has a toilet problem
The Chinese developed game Lost Soul Aside appears to be a slop of a failure unfortunately. I believe it’s inevitable to have less than stellar releases, but it’s still probably better than more than half of what currently comes out current year. I believe Phantom Blade Zero will be much better received.
The last big Chinese hit was Wuchang: Fallen Feathers, which was released just a few weeks ago. Lost Souls Aside is not well-liked but given that it was a low-budget title it likely still made money, unlike Western games like Dustborn, Concord, Saints Row, Star Wars: Outlaws, etc., that were enormous commercial disasters or, in cases like Spider-Man 2 and The Last of Us II, sold far below expectations. Also noteworthy is that the Chinese are able to pull a lot of Western players into titles like Genshin Impact, ZZZ, Wuthering Waves, and many others. The recipe to success is apparently know. It is just that the DEI-infused studios are actively ignoring it. On that note, even in shoestring-budget indie games like Nunholy you get 10/10 waifus nowadays (see video below). It is an utter embarrassment that Western devs spend infinitely more money just to create unappealing female characters.
I was not aware of Fallen Feathers. It seems to have sold well based off of Steam player counts, but received over 50% negative reviews for some reason. Whether it’s performance reasons or game quality I can’t say, but at least some of the remaining positive reviews are likely Chinese shills that have like 3 mins of playtime.
This game was initially very well received but very recently, the Chinese government put its foot down and demanded that certain (all?) bosses no longer get killed. Instead, they “fall asleep” after the fight, and this change was not well-received. This game is an easier version of Dark Souls, but with really sexy women:
Fallen Feathers looks totally uninspired (see 1 min clip): https://youtu.be/rLO6oM-TI5A
Meanwhile, gamers have been pleading for a Bloodbourne port for years.
This game is not a major step forward in its genre, but it seems competent enough. The best comparison are probably Western knockoffs like Lords of the Fallen or The Surge. Compared to these, I think Wuchang: Fallen Feathers looks pretty good. I do not think that people will talk about it ten years from now, though. With Bloodbourne, I can understand why Sony is hesitant. There is a fairly loud minority who wants this game ported but I do not see a remaster of a decade-old game set the world on fire. As a budget release for $30 it could do well. Unfortunately, these are not the sales figures Sony wants. Well, their other games, like Concord, or their many cancelled multiplayer titles, do not make money, but investors are likely much easier convinced to put money up for such projects than one to two million copies sold of Bloodbourne remasters for $30. I have no doubt that a Bloodbourne remaster would be more profitable than the upcoming Sony bombs Fairgame$ and Marathon, but go tell the MBAs that! For them, an imaginary two billion a year for ten years is infinitely more tempting than a virtually guaranteed $25 to $40m in profits.
Maybe it’s best not to get too caught up in the China vs Western gaming climate because I think there are valid arguments to be made against the products from either region. As far as Souls-likes go, and considering I’ve already completed the DS trilogy and ER, I’d maybe consider playing Nioh and Lies of P at a steep discount, but that’s where I’d draw the line. On the topic of those super successful Gotcha games, could you personally ever see yourself seriously putting any meaningful amount of time into those games? I don’t think I could even be bothered to install them honestly, even for “free.” It’d be like the equivalent of listening to Sabrina Carpenter’s Manchild on repeat, which some people seem to do for some reason.
This is AI’s answer for poor reviews regarding Fallen Feathers, which a lot of seems to be about supposed historical inaccuracies pissing off Chinese consumers:
Poor PC Optimization:
Many players reported significant performance problems on PC, describing the game as a “UE5 stutter fest” and having “worst-performing” issues despite powerful hardware.
Loading Screen Stuttering:
Some players encountered lengthy loading screens as shaders compiled, impacting gameplay and overall experience.
Out-of-Memory Errors:
Reports of “out-of-video-memory” errors were also a common complaint among PC users.
Inconsistent Performance:
While the console version reportedly performed well, the PC version’s poor performance was a major point of contention.
Controversial Historical Narrative
Historical Inaccuracies:
The game is set in the late Ming Dynasty, with the protagonist supporting the invading Qing forces, which is a sensitive and controversial theme for many Chinese gamers who view the Qing invasion as a foreign conquest.
“Whitewashing” History:
Some gamers and critics feel the game’s portrayal shifts blame and effectively “whitewashes” historical genocides and oppression by the Qing, leading to nationalist backlash.
Other Contributing Factors
Launch Controversies:
The game faced a backlash due to price discrepancies, with different regions experiencing vastly different pricing, particularly a sudden increase in Chinese regions.
Lack of Demo:
The absence of a demo meant players had to rely on influencer content and buy the game to experience it, which some found frustrating.
Review Bombing:
The confluence of technical issues and controversy led to widespread review bombing on Steam, with many players expressing their dissatisfaction by giving the game “Overwhelmingly Negative” ratings.
Gears of Wars: Reloaded is getting review bombed because they falsely advertised couch-coop like in the original to acquire pre-orders, then pulled a bait and switch. Also, the game runs like bad. Go figure.
Gears of War is a corpse of a franchise that Microsoft should let rest in peace. Every remaster or rerelease of the original game sells worse than the last one, and the same is true for every new mainline release. Epic sold this series to Microsoft when it was already past its peak, similar to how Nintendo sold its stake in Rare when the decline was already eminent. These are just two examples of the incredibly poor track record of Microsoft regarding acquisitions.
I’m curious to see what the true outcome of “Trump is Dead” is. Could just have the flu for all we know and is taking it easy, but speculation is rampant right now.
I think he is alive, but very sick. Much worse than the flu.
The guy is 79 years old, so he is certainly at an age where his body will not be able to recover quickly if he had a medical issue. Allegedly, J.D. Vance recently said the quiet part loud when stating that he was “ready to take over”. I wonder what his stance on the H-1B program is, considering the ethnicity of his wife.
Being married to a pooja isn’t great optics for the VP, but at least he didn’t covert to hinduism. Also, she’s definitely above average for an Indian woman, and is in great shape considering she birthed 3 children. Also, Vance doesn’t strike me as a guy who would ordinarily be able to bag a hot white trad wife. What does this have to do with his potential policies? Eh, Idk. We’ll have to perhaps wait and see what unfolds.
There are a lot of unflattering pictures of JD Vance floating around. In the first picture in this article he looks like a dog begging his wife for a treat. I know that realistically speaking it is completely inconceivable that his Indian wife would nag him to death if he would ever question the number of Indian immigrants in the country, but let us just wait and see if Trump will reappear.
Not knowing all the details, it appears that Valve has lost the ability to control what they sell on Steam due to effectively being cancelled by major payment processing companies, such as Visa, Mastercard, and PayPal. Not that I was ever interested in the types of games that are being banned, but it just seems like a case of give an inch, take a mile.
This is a very concerning development. Effectively, this means that financial organizations, i.e. the people that run them, are able to impose their will on the rest of the world. This sounds like a crazy conspiracy theory, but this is the world we live in.
First it was individuals being cancelled, but now it seems to be entire institutions. I doubt we’d ever see this type of discrimination against Sony or Microsoft, but they play ball of course.
Synthetic Man’s review of MGS3 is really good, I think: https://youtu.be/Qa_tgi6F_Vs
Some major points from memory:
• The remake/remaster (whatever you want to call it) is pretty poorly optimized on PC, and even consoles. Recommends playing the other editions of the game instead for now.
• The game in and of itself still holds up okay, especially with the updated control scheme.
• It’s pretty faithful in visual designs with some minor quirks and old school jank left in.
• The narrative gets a pretty good bashing, being called left-wing propaganda. Some interesting notes about Tomokazu Fukushima being responsible for the writing of all the codec calls in MGS2, therefore arguably most of the narrative in terms of perceived prophetic-ness.
• Overall, not a terrible overall score given SM’s track record.
Also, SM says his next review will probably be Silk Song. I’m interested in the game only in the fact that I disliked the first one and dropped it very quickly, and to see how well this much anticipated superstar indie game is received. I was curious as to whether or not you (Aaron) were following it and had any thoughts on it? I personally won’t play it, but I am curious to see if it ends up being considered one of the top ten greatest indie titles ever.
I have tried the base game, Hollow Knight, but did not enjoy it. Given the amount of praise it gets, you really wonder if the world is running on crazy pills these days. The visuals are some of the blandest, least appealing I have ever seen and the gameplay is standard “MetroidVania” fare. I really do not get the appeal. Given how well Hollow Knight sold, Silksong will surely do well. However, I would be surprised if it could repeat the success of the original game. Hollow Knight came out in 2017. The world has changed significantly. I wonder if the success of Hollow Knight is largely due to it having been the first, or one of the first, reasonably competent indie games in this genre, similar to how Braid sold really well in 2008, because it was one of the first indie games on Xbox. Braid 2, with similar graphics, would sell really poorly. I recall reading that the rerelease that came out recently was a commercial disaster.
I came across a story recently that Microsoft was advertising a game they published on PlayStation, while the opposite was true for Sony:
https://archive.ph/BsISv
This is not a sign of the “console wars” being over, at least not in the sense that both companies are now friendly competitors, making their games available on competitor hardware out of good will. Instead, this is a sign that consoles are becoming increasingly irrelevant. Microsoft is putting its games on PC and PlayStation to make more money as sales of their Xbox console are dismal. Sony is in a somewhat better position, but their gaming business is not growing. PS5 sales are lagging behind PS4 sales. There are no “console wars” anymore because people no longer care enough about them, with the exception of Nintendo, whose success shows that you need exclusive titles to sell hardware.