Anime waifu weirdos turn out to be weirdos. More at 11.

This is a Senator firing an opening salvo with a vague threat of government action.

Warner also warned, somewhat ominously, that if Valve does not adopt industry-standard moderation practices—whatever that means—it will “face more intense scrutiny from the federal government for its complicity in allowing hate groups to congregate and engage in activities that undoubtedly puts Americans at risk.”

Nothing has been done with government force, yet. Maybe he will drop it, maybe he won’t, but at the moment I’m responding to a Senator floating the idea of using government power to wade into Steam forums.

I don’t think anything good can come of the government deciding to crack down on Steam moderation in order to “save the children”.

The current situation of Steam having a toxic forum community in places is better than whatever happens with “scrutiny”.

If I may put on a tinfoil hat for a moment, this recent push to get Steam labeled as an extremist den that needs to be dealt with feels like yet another attack originating from competitors.

Wow this push against Valve kind of popped up quickly and suddenly didn’t it?

I know, I know we are on lemmy, where all judges are wrong and evil, but this actually seems pretty cut and dry.

Act No. 320 of 1937 (“Pennsylvania Election Code”). Section 1306-D:

(a) General rule.–At any time after receiving an official mail-in ballot, but on or before eight o’clock P.M. the day of the primary or election, the mail-in elector shall, in secret, proceed to mark the ballot only in black lead pencil, indelible pencil or blue, black or blue-black ink, in fountain pen or ball point pen, and then fold the ballot, enclose and securely seal the same in the envelope on which is printed, stamped or endorsed “Official Election Ballot.” This envelope shall then be placed in the second one, on which is printed the form of declaration of the elector, and the address of the elector’s county board of election and the local election district of the elector. The elector shall then fill out, date and sign the declaration printed on such envelope.

Abridged:

At any time after receiving an official mail-in ballot, but on or before eight o’clock P.M. the day of the primary or election the mail-in elector shall […] then fill out, date and sign the declaration printed on such envelope.

The “correct date” is any date before or on the day of the election, according to the code. A judge reads and interprets the written law, and this seems like a simple read.

The counter argument to the apparently unanimous reading of the law by all parties presented in court hinged on: "Pennsylvania’s constitution, which says that elections in the state ‘shall be free and equal’ " making the law itself unconstitutional, which I’m not surprised wasn’t very persuasive. Ballot envelopes without written dates were presumably treated equally (as opposed to being treated differently based on the vote cast) and the state didn’t interfere with the ability to fill out the date. The rules were laid down and everyone who followed them had their vote counted equally.

I can already hear people in the comments screaming about how they don’t like it. The standards for the mail-in ballots have been there since 1937 and nobody had a problem with them until right this moment when it looked like letting them slide might flip a close election. If you still don’t like them, pressure the legislature, not the judges. There’s not a ton of wiggle room in how to read the code.

Rumors from who?

‘Screamers’ is a 1995 scifi movie starring Peter Weller. There’s just something about the vibe of this movie that really draws me in. If you like sort of bleak mid budget scifi this is a good one.

‘Hell Comes To Frogtown’, a 1988 movie starring Rowdy Roddy Piper. A post apocalypse where there are frog people and Piper is playing a Mad Max type. It’s an absurd fever dream of a movie. ‘Big Trouble In Little China’ energy.

‘Soldier’ from 1998 starring Kurt Russell. This is like a forgotten Kurt Russell movie. It’s not particularly deep, but it’s a good popcorn movie to watch a simple plot of a super soldier taking out evil super soldiers.

‘The Spy Who Came In From The Cold’ is a 1965 movie. About, of course, a spy. An agent sent not East Germany during the Cold War. It’s not the normal action oriented James Bond kind of spy movie. It’s a lot talkier, and I find it kind of depressing. So if you like that sort of thing, there it is.

‘Observe And Report’ is a Seth Rogan movie about being a mall security guard. It is nothing like the awful ‘Paul Blart’ movies, which everyone assumes when I mention it in real life. This movie is more like Death To Smoochie in its dark comedy sensibilities.

I’m getting us over a needed benchmark this week, doing a handoff meeting to somebody, and then coming back in December to jointly work on it with them. At that point all the work should be done and it should be more of giving them a tour of the thing. Everyone knows this is a terrible situation. A lot of things went wrong to get us here.

Edit: Having a coffee right now after fixing an automation thing from another company which attaches to our robot. The guy that company sent was “I dunno what’s wrong with it.” I just want to sit next to my cat, paint minis, and watch Stargate.

Oh you see, this is a project that’s been going on for years, and I started into it six months ago to get it done by 2025. It’s not just a computer thing, but a robot with a lot of both hardware and software work. Naturally last month suddenly a lot of overhauls were made to the design, and since I’ve single handedly installed all of them, no one person except for me is familiar with exactly how everything fits together. The project plan and timeline is “get it done fasterer.” At this point they will throw whatever material resources are needed to me, but we just don’t have the personnel aside from me.

The project management is also not from the same continent as me, so meetings are a painful thing to schedule. The manager has finally come to the US to oversee the last round of acceptance work.

Right now the mechanicals are 99.9% done and I’m interacting remotely with software people to be their onsite hands.

The project manager is flittering around the room.

Literally dealing with that right now. The project manager is on site, and I thought that I’d finally have some backup on putting together this monster project. He’s so far been asking a lot of questions legitimately trying to wrap his head around what he’s seeing.

I’m the most (only) experienced person on the project and I don’t like it.

Those were both side games. Like how Fallout New Vegas isn’t Fallout 4.

I know commenters will probably be outraged by this sale, but to me this is just the status quo of the modern art scene. The high end art scene hasn’t been about appreciating the art itself since Andy Warhol (at least). The scene is just a bunch of people with too much money all pretending to be intellectuals to each other and buying garbage to prove how deep and meaningful it is. There’s probably also an element of money funny business as well, but I’m not versed enough to say the exact mechanisms, just that I feel in my bones that when people are trading around multi-million dollar paintings among other people in the scene that I am suspicious. There is as much personal expression and meaning in the AI creation as there is in most other pieces being pumped out.

I have exactly as much respect for the AI art generator as I do for the rest of the human high end artists churning out junk for rich people.

BY GAWD THE DNC IS (rhetorically) TORN IN HALF!

The movie was infamously over budget. It basically doubled from its initial budget and was for the time a record expensive movie to make. All of that for a final product that was fine but not really showing all that money on screen. It was the topic of many late night show jokes and such.

Observe And Report starring Seth Rogan.

It’s a movie about a mall security guard and it often gets confused for the awful Paul Blart movies by people, which is why I think it gets dismissed. But it’s genuinely darkly funny. It leans into the hero complex of the main character and it gets weird and off putting in the best kinds of ways. If you like Death To Smoochie, you will probably like it.

I’d like to mention Harbinger Down.

It is made by the practical special effects company originally hired for the 2011 prequel, who were then fired and replaced with a CGI company. They were so disgruntled they made their own off-brand The Thing movie to show off what they got. The plot is kind of meh, but the effects are amazing for fans of The Thing.

Waterworld is fine. It just gets ragged on because of its insane budget and the lackluster results for said budget. But if you don’t care about that and just watch a movie, it’s a decent movie.

The Simpsons joke where the tie in video game needs 40 quarters is still funny though.

The setting and design in Valerian is fantastic. The opening sequence really is among the best in film. Shame about the plot and main characters.

It’s poorly rated? What in the world. Madness. This is the dark comedy film to watch.