Made the switch to Bazzite at the end of 10 so I love Heroic.

The ‘content’ actually may not be illegal in many places. Laws in a number of places do not include non-photographic representations because the harm is in the creation of the imagery by abusing real human children or the incentivisation of abuse by purchasing the material. At any rate, the point is that it’s not the platform but the content people object to. Closing twitter down would not stop people who want it from using GenAI to make images. The tech exists now and we will have to figure out how to handle that.

“But won’t the heliu-”

“FOREVER!”

I really want to see what percentage of ‘users’ licenses are actually paid, and/or what average percentage of ‘users’ titles are just free. I have precisely one game I have paid for on Epic (Satisfactory, because I was excited for first person factorio) but I have over 100 titles in my library. I have to wonder how many of those free games I would have to download before the server costs completely eat the profit from that one copy of Satisfactory.

I’m no fan of banning this or that particular platform (it’s like trying to get rid of cheeseburgers by banning McDonalds; the burgers are still available from all the other burger chains and all the people who use the one will just switch to others) but this is a hilariously wrong way to get to the right answer.

The fullest widom is knowing it all depends on your goals and risks. This is not a universal binary.

I just saw something about this the other day. Internet advertising has apparently begun the process of swallowing its own tail. Cory Doctorow was talking to someone about it. I can’t remember who it was though.

Depressingly, yeah. I keep circling back around to how harmful advertising and marketing are to society. We need to ban advertising, full stop.

And that kind of knee-jerk avoidance of anything uncomfortable is at the core of reactionary thinking. If it makes you uncomfortable to be near something a child molester has touched, will you abandon their victims? The home they lived in? The clothes which they owned once but that others could use? The sidewalk they walked along to get to the scene of their crimes? Shall we all expel the things that make us uncomfortable? Some people are made uncomfortable by foreigners, and people who look different. Don’t tell me ‘but that’s different.’ It’s not. It’s the same reactionary childishness, and it might make you uncomfortable to acknowledge it, but that’s why we can’t use discomfort as a measure.

That makes an assumption that it is one’s moral responsibility to dispose of work made by someone who did something wrong. That’s pure circular argument. As for supporting someone evil, that might apply if you bought it after you found out what they were doing, but it is absurd to complain about something someone did with no way of knowing what it might go toward. It is also absurd to require people to investigate every facet of every possible person they could interact with. If you are walking down the street and meet someone running a hotdog cart, will you hold off on the purchase until you can run a background check? What if they’re actually ‘evil?’ *furious eyebrow wiggles* This kind of purity policing is silly, like placing the burden of climate change on the person who didn’t separate their recycling.

You’re stalking me and talking about how I’m disturbed? My friend Harvey the rabbit and I are very disappointed by your hypocrisy.

Let’s be real here, if the artist created great work and then was also a killer, not only is the painting still just as aesthetically pleasing as it always was, but if we are going to care about what they did outside of the art, it only makes the art more interesting as an example of the varied nature of humanity. The same individual produced heinous murder and exquisite beauty.

But you wouldn’t expect the guitarist of Rage Against the Machine to give a talk on molecular biology. Just because one musician can do a thing, we do not expect all musicians to do those same things.

Most artists don’t have anything like that kind of cash or cache. Maybe some of the big corporate marketing babies but not many outside of that. I don’t have a significant worry that some guy is going to use my few dollars from bandcamp to push some political party regardless of their beliefs, and I don’t listen to marketing-powered, soulless pop nonsense that gets the kind of money behind it I’d have to care about.

Gender thing aside, just draw. Pencil, sharpener, and paper are cheap. You might already have them. Start by doodling and doing some tutorials/exercises. Go from there.

Haha, imagine giving a shit about an artist’s views and actions outside of the art they create. I don’t expect my doctor or political representative to be a good painter. Why would I expect my painter to give me medical advice or represent me politically? They’re completely different activities and I look for different people to perform them.

I mention Brooks of the Quarantine Collective on YT a fair bit. He’s the most loudly ‘left’ creator I watch, (part of the group behind Operation Inflation at the ICE protests) though I generally prefer people who don’t get too lost in the Left/Right paradigm and focus more on effects. Others in the vein are ones like FD Signifier, We’re in Hell, Contrapoints, Folding Ideas, Dan Carlin, etc. Not really a fan of the ones you listed though so maybe these won’t be your cuppa.

It’s Debian. Let us know when you have your first real issues with it, probably some time in 2037.

My sympathies. What a terrible thing to be the last thing you ever see.

Back with more unfunny comics, huh? Better than the basically fascist one, but still not good.