And tomorrow, they’re going to drop a bomb on her.

Setting aside constitutional issues, think about how insane and delusional you have to be to decide that the fact that a significant number of people are protesting your policies means that protesting needs to be prohibited punished.

Literally shameless.

Is it bad that I’m cynically unsurprised that this was in Spain?

Just makes me wonder how many Palestinians they’ve murdered in similar circumstances, and we just didn’t hear about it because they weren’t Israelis, so it was treated as if it didn’t matter.

He nailed it. They don’t adopt the winning strategies because they don’t actually want to win.

The exact Democrat strategy, self-evidently, is to merely rake in as much soft money as possible running as “not the Republicans.” All other considerations, including actually winning, are secondary to that.

Then if they do happen to win, they conveniently fail to actually accomplish anything, since actually accomplishing any of the things they’re meant to do would upset their corporate patrons, which would cut into those enormous piles of soft money they’re raking in.

Then, whether they lost or they won and then conveniently failed to accomplish anything, they blame the Republicans for the fact that the wealthy few have once again benefitted at everyone else’s expense, so they can once again run as “not the Republicans.” Rinse and repeat.

They’re like five year olds…

I’m GenX. I’ve spent my entire life watching the Boomers fuck things up, then having to wade through the debris they leave in their wake.

I’m not expecting that to change now.

Oh look - more intellectually dishonest anti-vaping propaganda…

I smoked for thirty years before I discovered vaping and switched. My lungs feel better now than they have at any other point within my memory.

But if whichever lying shitstains are responsible for this clearly deliberate propaganda campaign had their way about it, I would’ve never gotten that chance, and I’d still be smoking, and dying or dead.

And why? What’s their goal? Why are they trying so hard, and so brazeny dishonestly, to undermine a thing that can save lives? What’s their interest in making it impossible for people like me to have an alternative that’s undeniably at the very least MUCH less of a health risk? Why do they want smokers to keep smoking, and keep dying?

I know nothing at all about Palworld other than that it exists, but I gave a lot of thought to the issue back when BW were the newest games and it was a controversy.

And I’d say you’re dead right - that was always my view too - that the games failed by introducing the topic, then “settling” it with vague, hypocritical “Yes, but…” expediency.

The thing though, and the reason I eventually stopped thinking about it, is that there isn’t a good answer.

From an ethical viewpoint, N was entirely right.

But from a practical viewpoint, Gamefreak long since established the mechanics of capturing Pokemon, and part of it is simply that the more powerful mons are more of a challenge, and that challenge comes from the fact that they don’t want to submit - you have to force them.

That makes sense and is satisfying from a gameplay perspective, but yes - it’s problematic from an ethical perspective.

The aftermath was at least better handled back then - the mons continued to resist until you won them over, which you did simply by spending time with them. The problem there though, and part of the reason that I give Gamefreak a bit of a pass on the matter, is that players whined about the supposed hardship of having to spend time winning over mons, and Gamefreak gave in and introduced shortcuts. That’s one part that I’d sort of situationslly disagree with you on - the original mechanic to win a Pokemon’s loyalty wasn’t brainwashing - it was taming, in the traditional sense. Brainwashing was only introduced later, to accommodate players who were too lazy to spend time actually winning the loyalty of the mons.

So it could be argued that to at least some notable degree, it’s not so much that Gamefreak doesn’t care, but that the players don’t care.

The biggest issue to me though, and the main reason I stopped thinking about it, is that it comes down to a basic societal dilemma.

Much of human society is, by any reasonable standard, foul and loathsome. We’re led by blatant psychopaths - ego-driven, greedy, self-serving shitheels who really shouldn’t even be allowed out among other people unaccompanied, and who hold insane amounts of wealth and power. They’re vile, twisted scumbags, and their evil permeates society. Millions of people every year suffer and die, just so that a handful of scumbags can continue to enjoy entirely undeserved privilege.

That’s grotesque and insane, but it’s also a fact that people have to deal with.

And there is no good solution. Yes - you can teach children to be ethically and morally conscious, and that’s certainly virtuous, but only up to a point, because beyond a certain point, all you accomplish by that is making them unfit to make their way through a world that is neither ethical nor moral - a world in which to some notable degree, they’re going to have to be selfish pieces of shit, just to protect themselves against other selfish pieces of shit.

But of course, that also jusr ensures that there’s a constant supply of selfish pieces of shit, and 'round and 'round it goes.

Yes - the world could be a fine place if we all had N’s principles. But if only some have N’s principles, they’re most likely just going to end up ground underfoot, entirely unequipped to deal with the loathsome, selfish pieces of shit who don’t and never will share those principles.

So in a way, the way that Gamefreak (and now apparently the Palworld devs) dealt with it has some merit - basically to say, “This ethical issue exists, and you should be aware of it, but you should also be ready to ignore it when expedient.” Because the unfortunate truth of the matter is that there are many people who will never do anything other than ignore it, and loathsome though it may be that’s the world we have to live in.

For now…