All joking aside, I would love to go see Moscow just for the architecture alone. Don't know if I can be trusted drinking vodka though.

Prez wrote on Feb 23, 2023, 14:03:
Hey I got a 'plus one' on my trip that I won to Moscow. Want to go Beamer?

I am dying to go to the Kremlin in winter. My wife is just dying to go, thinks I'm nuts to want to go in winter. She just wants to do the Trans-Siberian Railroad. Let's you and I shove her on that train then go drink some vodka. I took Russian for two years in HS, which means I'm qualified to swear then ask where the pharmacy is!

Oh, bonus that I forgot - the documentary that he links to is by Robbie and Abby Martin. Not just Robbie.

Abby Martin used to have a show on RT. Y'know, Russia state propaganda. He's putting his faith into a documentary about how the West is to blame, and Russia is forced, that was created by a couple literally on Russia's state payroll.
"No different than CNN" he'll say. It's exceptionally different, but again, no one is advocating for watching CNN.

Oh, and Abby was once a hardcore 9/11 truther, which makes her suspect. We know she loves bad conspiracies based on misinformation and half-truths. Only, she's recanted on those. She admits she was wrong. But she still loves her conspiracies based on half-truths. And, for a while, she was on Venezuela's state TV channel's payroll. Again, doing a lot of complaining about the US while paid by another government to do exactly that.

To people here that complain that JDreyer and I are too far left - this is what too far left looks like. When you no longer can differentiate between what's real and what's trying to make you outraged so you subscribe to their Patreon and help them get more jobs with foreign governments.

"Untill we see the contents of Hunter Biden's laptop, I have to believe it has copies of both Atomic Heart and Hogwarts Legacy on it and that makes his father a bad man!" - Tucker Kosumo

Hey I got a 'plus one' on my trip that I won to Moscow. Want to go Beamer?

Is there any bigger cop-out than "any link I give you would be mocked, so I won't bother?"
We could help you understand why maybe the links are bad.

Like A Very Heavy Agenda, which is an immensely biased video (most videos are), that gets a lot of things wrong. Here's a tip - stop watching videos for any coverage that's deep. They move very quickly, cannot show sources, and appeal to emotion and anger. They'll mislead you on things such as, in Robbie's case, claiming that the Maiden Revolution was US backed. The documentary isn't a case of "the truth they're hiding," nor is it a case of "the truth is somewhere in the middle." It's a case of someone wanting to anger you and doing a lot of cherry picking and appeals to emotion to do so, without showing even a tiny bit of a complete story.
"But CNN and MSNBC..." yeah, but no one here watches them, let alone told anyone else to watch it to learn "the truth."

If an uncited YouTube documentary is where your standards are and how you form your opinions, yes, you're not going to live up to other people's higher standards. What's next, telling us Loose Change is great, or NFTs are the future?

Acleacius wrote on Feb 23, 2023, 12:16:

Momodious wrote on Feb 23, 2023, 10:27:

Wish you could provide links of us attacking the Russian people or an example of pro Nato Prop, cause then we might actually have a clue what you mean.
No one has denied US failures, except maybe the gop who often side against accurate history.

It's clear the Russian government has gone rogue in the world and are responsible for cyber, malware and ransomware attacks across the world.
Not to mention every first world country (which Russia is not) is punishing Russia because of it's War Crimes, Genocide and Crimes Against Humanity.
The Russian people are suffering because of the government is criminality is so profound, the world is isolating them.
So stop blaming the people who are trying to stop an illegal war, murder, rape, kidnapping and destruction, by holding the GOVERNMENT responsible.

Trying to make us seem racist by your Dmitri insult, is absurd.
Standing by for a credible link to false pro NATO propaganda.
Standing by for a credible link for which Ukraine is responsible for anyway for the invasion.

On the flipside, how about a link to Russia kidnapping Mayors of the two provinces to install Russian friendly Mayors who encouraged the invasion.
Not that it's pertinent.
Moment mayor of Melitopol kidnapped by Russian forces | Ukraine war
Top KGB agent says Putin was nothing more than a -mid-level bureaucrat-

Any link I give you would not be credible by your standards. I'm not supporting Russia. I didn't call anyone racist. It's their American exceptionalism that is bullshit.

EDIT: And if you want to see what NATO's been up to for decades, watch "A Very Heavy Agenda" by Robbie Martin on Vimeo.

Quinn wrote on Feb 23, 2023, 10:03:
How does Game Pass work exactly? Does the fact that I paid the monthly fee this month mean the damage is done, or do I need to actually install/play the game?

The negotiation for terms of payment between Microsoft and the developer/publisher is different for each game. Only a few people are privy to that information for Atomic Heart, so your safest bet is just to not download it or play it.

Momodious wrote on Feb 23, 2023, 10:27:

Wish you could provide links of us attacking the Russian people or an example of pro Nato Prop, cause then we might actually have a clue what you mean.
No one has denied US failures, except maybe the gop who often side against accurate history.

It's clear the Russian government has gone rogue in the world and are responsible for cyber, malware and ransomware attacks across the world.
Not to mention every first world country (which Russia is not) is punishing Russia because of it's War Crimes, Genocide and Crimes Against Humanity.
The Russian people are suffering because of the government is criminality is so profound, the world is isolating them.
So stop blaming the people who are trying to stop an illegal war, murder, rape, kidnapping and destruction, by holding the GOVERNMENT responsible.

Trying to make us seem racist by your Dmitri insult, is absurd.
Standing by for a credible link to false pro NATO propaganda.
Standing by for a credible link for which Ukraine is responsible for anyway for the invasion.

On the flipside, how about a link to Russia kidnapping Mayors of the two provinces to install Russian friendly Mayors who encouraged the invasion.
Not that it's pertinent.
Moment mayor of Melitopol kidnapped by Russian forces | Ukraine war
Top KGB agent says Putin was nothing more than a -mid-level bureaucrat-

Developer intent is great and all, but developers don't control what happens with the taxes on their profits. As long as they're a Russian business, their profits feed the Russian coffers, and help to fund the war.

Regardless of how you feel about the devs, regardless of whether they're pro-Putin, pro-war, or passionately against those things and against the war, their tax dollars still go to the war.

And yes, that means that sometimes innocent companies are hurt by sanctions and embargoes. Sanctions are not designed to hurt the government. They never have been. They're designed to put pressure on the populace who then put pressure on the government. Which sucks, but it's better than all out war.

Prez wrote on Feb 23, 2023, 11:46:
I played the first two hours of the game and actually it is a blast. But that's not the reason I am posting. Incredibly, Vladimir Putin himself called me to thank me. Insane right? In what I'm sure is just an unrelated coincidence, I've suddenly started getting ads for vodka and how the Russians are actually the good guys and Ukrainians are bad, bad people. I even just won a sweepstakes to fly to Moscow and have an all-expenses paid trip to tour the government buildings of the Russian Federation. Strange that they point out that I can watch firsthand the suffering of a few Ukrainian families but whatever.

🤣

I played the first two hours of the game and actually it is a blast. But that's not the reason I am posting. Incredibly, Vladimir Putin himself called me to thank me. Insane right? In what I'm sure is just an unrelated coincidence, I've suddenly started getting ads for vodka and how the Russians are actually the good guys and Ukrainians are bad, bad people. I even just won a sweepstakes to fly to Moscow and have an all-expenses paid trip to tour the government buildings of the Russian Federation. Strange that they point out that I can watch firsthand the suffering of a few Ukrainian families 'thanks to my heroic actions' but whatever.

Momodious wrote on Feb 23, 2023, 11:19:
It's the double standard that pisses me off.

I'm supporting the Russian game because Ukrainians killed Russians, which may not be true, but everyone supports war.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motte-and-bailey_fallacy
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equivocation

Momodious wrote on Feb 23, 2023, 11:19:
I heard it from Chris Hedges on a podcast, but all I could find was either Russian media saying it was an ethnic cleansing, or western media saying it was a myth. This is why this shit makes me so upset. Everything you hear about this war is filtered through either pro-Russian prop or pro-NATO prop. Even if that is untrue, my other points still stand. We don't seem to remember how we've been overthrowing governments, installing puppet dictators, manufacturing reasons for war, etc. It's the double standard that pisses me off.

While, I would agree with that, we're led to believe we were outing evil people in our efforts. It depends who you ask whether that is true. We also were not attempting genocide or to take over a country. We're the good guys right? We're supposed to liberate the evil and restore it back to the rightful hands. Again, whether that happens or not, is another story, but we're not strictly targeting civilians in the process...

It comes to the point where we just need to use common sense and whether both sides are blowing a little extra smoke, use your noggin on what appears valid and not. Do you think a country is doing good invading another country, when its own people are emigrating? At least the sane ones? Do you think a country that is targeting and killing civilians with clear evidence of that happening, is doing the right thing? I know, you said we killed civilians and I get that. That would more than likely be collateral damage unfortunately while we attempt to do good. Russia is legit targeting civilians. They're also reported to have kidnapped thousands of children from the towns they've pillaged so that they could brain wash those children in to forgetting of their Ukrainian heritage. There is a lot of wrong going on, but to listen to others try to make it sound like it's not so bad and to not forget that American is just as evil is wrong.

Momodious wrote on Feb 23, 2023, 10:27:
Also, Ukrainians were systematically slaughtering Russian speaking people in eastern Ukraine for YEARS before this war happened.

From what I have seen there is a lot of historical animosity between russia and ukraine. Like the russian empire banning ukrainian language from 1804 until that empire collapsed, or a russian created famine in the 1932 that killed up to 7.5 million ukranians. Everybody likes to talk about ukraining corruption, but that just seems to be conservative talking points to make putin look good. Like one person stealing billions to enrich his family makes a much smaller poor nation more corrupt that his? Propaganda.

And what is the desired end result?

The Russian counterintelligence regime had compiled lists of some Ukrainians, RUSI said who were divided into four categories, Those who should be killed, those in need of suppression and intimidation, those considered neutral who should be encouraged to collaborate and those prepared to collaborate.

This shit is pretty horrific coming from a country that wants to be enjoying all the benefits of a western civilization but cannot behave in a civilized manner to neighboring countries. So screw the russian developers. No sympathy coming from here.

Beamer wrote on Feb 23, 2023, 11:12:

Steele Johnson wrote on Feb 23, 2023, 11:03:

sfhand wrote on Feb 23, 2023, 00:10:
One of the reasons this old man games is to forget about all the BS in the world, if only for a few hours. No one in this thread has any way of really knowing what is happening on the other side of the globe, much less in the US (if you are in the US) with any certainty. There is no way to get news that is trustworthy, none at all, even our understanding of history is being changed to suit today's political agendas. When faced with the realities of war we all agree war is terrible, yet somehow 66% of the American public cheered on Shock and Awe in Iraq. Not me, however, when Iraq was unfolding I was certain that my fellow citizens were too smart to fall for the BS (the UN presentation evidence of Iraqi chemical warfare mobile labs was rendered models rather than actual photographs of said units) after having gone through Vietnam. Apparently we are all still hanging out in Plato's cave...

This is all that needs to be said. Y'all think you know what's going on in the world and forget that we're all just peasants to the billionaire, power hungry freaks that that feed us the information that they want us to believe (or disbelieve). That's all it is. If you're not in the global 1%, then you really don't know shit about what's going on other than maybe people dying. Go play your games

This is bad advice, though. Ignoring that quite a few people here are probably in the top 1% (if you own a home in the NYC area, and it's paid off, you're very close), since that's not how you meant it.

"Go play your game and don't care about anything" is overall bad advice. For one, there isn't really anyone saying you're a bad person for playing it, they're just saying there are more considerations than most games. And isn't that fair to say? We actually do know a lot of what's happening in Ukraine. Do we know that they were invaded. Yes. Objectively, yes we do.

People here get irate over their game being on Epic. They get irate over Denovo taking them from 140fps to 120fps. They get irate over Microsoft saying they're committed to the PC. Most no longer post here, but a few years back we had people irate over "objective game reviews," or over having an incorrect amount of black people in a medieval fantasy, or having to play as a woman.

Isn't a war a bit more real than some of that? Isn't it fair for some people to care about such things? It's weird that people tie it to age - I'd expect that, as you get older, you care more about the real things and less about whether a feature discussed in a preview a year before launch actually made it into the game.

Yeah, but you still don't know what's going on in the world other than maybe friends and family dying. The only thing you have is your senses. The media isn't going to help a peasant understand what's truly going on. In fact, it's designed to always leave questions (I'm talking global politics and large scale events, not home invasions in your neighborhood). Collective illusions is at mass scale these days, and that's generally a side effect of how fast information can travel now, whether it's true or false. And now with AI, issues likes this will be exacerbated even more, because within the next few years or so, the average person won't be able to discern a real photo/video from a fake one. Then what? Good luck, everyone (all you peasants)! 🤣

I heard it from Chris Hedges on a podcast, but all I could find was either Russian media saying it was an ethnic cleansing, or western media saying it was a myth. This is why this shit makes me so upset. Everything you hear about this war is filtered through either pro-Russian prop or pro-NATO prop. Even if that is untrue, my other points still stand. We don't seem to remember how we've been overthrowing governments, installing puppet dictators, manufacturing reasons for war, etc. It's the double standard that pisses me off.

Steele Johnson wrote on Feb 23, 2023, 11:03:

sfhand wrote on Feb 23, 2023, 00:10:
One of the reasons this old man games is to forget about all the BS in the world, if only for a few hours. No one in this thread has any way of really knowing what is happening on the other side of the globe, much less in the US (if you are in the US) with any certainty. There is no way to get news that is trustworthy, none at all, even our understanding of history is being changed to suit today's political agendas. When faced with the realities of war we all agree war is terrible, yet somehow 66% of the American public cheered on Shock and Awe in Iraq. Not me, however, when Iraq was unfolding I was certain that my fellow citizens were too smart to fall for the BS (the UN presentation evidence of Iraqi chemical warfare mobile labs was rendered models rather than actual photographs of said units) after having gone through Vietnam. Apparently we are all still hanging out in Plato's cave...

This is all that needs to be said. Y'all think you know what's going on in the world and forget that we're all just peasants to the billionaire, power hungry freaks that that feed us the information that they want us to believe (or disbelieve). That's all it is. If you're not in the global 1%, then you really don't know shit about what's going on other than maybe people dying. Go play your games

This is bad advice, though. Ignoring that quite a few people here are probably in the top 1% (if you own a home in the NYC area, and it's paid off, you're very close), since that's not how you meant it.

"Go play your game and don't care about anything" is overall bad advice. For one, there isn't really anyone saying you're a bad person for playing it, they're just saying there are more considerations than most games. And isn't that fair to say? We actually do know a lot of what's happening in Ukraine. Do we know that they were invaded. Yes. Objectively, yes we do.

People here get irate over their game being on Epic. They get irate over Denovo taking them from 140fps to 120fps. They get irate over Microsoft saying they're committed to the PC. Most no longer post here, but a few years back we had people irate over "objective game reviews," or over having an incorrect amount of black people in a medieval fantasy, or having to play as a woman.

Isn't a war a bit more real than some of that? Isn't it fair for some people to care about such things? It's weird that people tie it to age - I'd expect that, as you get older, you care more about the real things and less about whether a feature discussed in a preview a year before launch actually made it into the game.

sfhand wrote on Feb 23, 2023, 00:10:
One of the reasons this old man games is to forget about all the BS in the world, if only for a few hours. No one in this thread has any way of really knowing what is happening on the other side of the globe, much less in the US (if you are in the US) with any certainty. There is no way to get news that is trustworthy, none at all, even our understanding of history is being changed to suit today's political agendas. When faced with the realities of war we all agree war is terrible, yet somehow 66% of the American public cheered on Shock and Awe in Iraq. Not me, however, when Iraq was unfolding I was certain that my fellow citizens were too smart to fall for the BS (the UN presentation evidence of Iraqi chemical warfare mobile labs was rendered models rather than actual photographs of said units) after having gone through Vietnam. Apparently we are all still hanging out in Plato's cave...

This is all that needs to be said. Y'all think you know what's going on in the world and forget that we're all just peasants to the billionaire, power hungry freaks that that feed us the information that they want us to believe (or disbelieve). That's all it is. If you're not in the global 1%, then you really don't know shit about what's going on other than maybe people dying. Go play your games

Momodious wrote on Feb 23, 2023, 10:27:
I find it funny that people are shitting all over the Russian people, making sweeping generalizations about the population - including saying that they are all complicit in this "illegal fucking war." You realize the U.S. has been bombing the fuck out of the middle east, killing countless innocents, assassinating leaders, blowing up weddings in Yemen, etc. Every tax dollar that you have spent is a piece of shrapnel in their corpses. Every ad you watch on a major news network is money in the pockets of defense contractors who will do or say anything to keep us embroiled in forever wars. We don't care though.

We just love a good Red Scare. Get on top of your fucking soap boxes when "Dmitry" makes a game, but hide in your caves and play WoW when Uncle Sam is having the time of his life war-criming the fuck out of anyone he wants to.

NATO can fuck off for pushing everyone to the edge, Russia can fuck off for obviously everything it's done. From what I've read this game does NOT glorify communism or socialism or the soviet union. Even if it did, it's a fucking piece of art, and communism and socialism are valid politico-philosophical systems to discuss. Sorry, ancaps. Also, Ukrainians were systematically slaughtering Russian speaking people in eastern Ukraine for YEARS before this war happened.

Purchased.

I'd like to read up on this. Can you please provide a link to an article. Like, legit. I'd like to know the context.