!casualeurope@piefed.social

!casualeurope@piefed.social

The Trump administration recently approached a coalition of U.S. investors set to take over TikTok's U.S. operations with an ask: Will the group make a payment to the federal government "in the low billions," according to a person with direct knowledge of the talks.

We got to 200 friends!

I wrote in this post that I'm uncomfortaple to argue "genetical[ly] or genealogical[ly]" why people "belong" in some place or another. I think that's ethno-nationalist reasoning and a "weapon of the enemy" reasoning applies. Even if it's in favour of Palestinians.

But apparently, that's "settler-colonialist apologism" for dessalines. Ethno-nationalism is ok if it's targeting "the right" people, I guess. /s

I think the reasoning of the comment removal is bollocks. Just because I don't want to argue why someone "belongs" someplace because of their genes, I'm not all of a sudden in favour of settler-colonialism.

Finished AI: The Somnium Files ! Things became really weird for a bit, but I liked the ending.

While I have shared my feelings previously, but some final thoughts:

Even though there are multiple routes, you can jump straight to the diverging point, and other than playing that "somnium" again and selecting the other route, you don't have to replay anything else, which was a big plus for me.

And for someone new to the genre, these routes aren't optional or side-content, you only get the full picture after playing all the routes, which then opens the "true" route.

Visuals are really good. Someone whose experience of VN / adventure games is limited to Phoenix Wright and Hatoful Boyfriend, this game looks absolutely gorgeous.

Performance is fine for most of the game, but near the end, I started noticing that there was sometimes a delay when showing a video etc. (when talking with people, if they refer to something that happened before, it plays a small clip, kinda like picture in picture mode as a quick reminder). It used to be instant in the start, but near the end, it would often take couple of seconds. Not a major issue, but noticeable. Other than that, don't recall any other performance issues.

Finally, the characters and the story was interesting, and while the overall story and character feels very sombre, there is lots of whimsy and fun in it too. I am looking forward to playing next games in the series.

On PlayStation side, I am still focusing only on Final Fantasy XIV.

Still playing the trial, and have reached level 50. Though main quests are around level 30 and they sync my level to that, so can't use my OP level 50 powers. So I have stopped doing all the side quests, if I ever try another class, can use those to level them up quickly. Still the "blue" ones, which are used to introduce / open a new feature, but ignoring all the other side stuff.

As for the main quests, while the story isn't bad, the quests themselves are very fetch quest heavy, and while I am still enjoying the game, I can understand why some people call the base game to be slog, they also say the expansions are some of the best Final Fantasy stories ever, so hopefully things will improve for better.

As I am still on free trial, hoping for a sale to buy the game. Their last sale ended just before I started the game, so don't think it will go on sale again before my free trial is up, may just have to buy the game at full price...

For my next game on Switch, I have been wanting to play some cozy game, took a look at a few farming games, short listed some of them, but wasn't sure about what to start. So I went back to Tiny Lands, it's a "spot the differences" game, with low-poly 3D dioramas. Very chill and cozy, no time limit, no counter of any kind, just light music with sound effects (like birds sound, or tree cutting sound) based on the diorama.

I started this game in 2021, and would play it for 10-15 mins after every 3-4 months when I finish whatever else I was playing, so out of roughly 100 levels (10 worlds, each with 10 levels) I had done only about 25 or so. Now I am doing the rest and plan to finish it.

I have already cleared the 2nd and 3rd world, and have just started the 4th one.

I also got couple of indie games on sale, but will start them after Tiny Lands.

What about all of you? What have you been playing and/or plan to play?

In France : https://www.monde-diplomatique.fr/cartes/PPA

They're lobbying for laws, supporting political parties, and even influencing orthodox economic theories and their spread.
They're also buying publishing houses, survey institutes, and even journalist schools.
That's how you can find people who claim to be neither from the left or the right, but are only knowing/regurgitating opinions broadcasted in the capitalist-owned state(, e.g., solve the deficit by lowering the number of public servants and selling public companies, instead of taxing the billionaires and fighting tax fraud&schemes, after all they're the ones creating jobs and working enough hours to deserve millions, and they'll leave the country if we tax them, not seeing the problem with this race to the bottom).

Just a reminder of our hypocrisy when we're criticizing the state's Pravda while our laws allow the Pravda of the millionaires.

Worker's owned medias and companies would be the obvious third way to private//public ones, or at least the three types in a relative equal mesure, but not >90% of capitalist-owned medias. We could/should also finally accomplish the pluralism that we're so proud of and makes us a "democracy" better than the dictatorships allegedly specialized in brainwashing their citizens(, otherwise how could the authentic popular support be explained, they still need to be sanctioned/invaded/liberated). Concretely, we could give ~100€ every year to our citizens, and let them choose/vote to which newspaper such sum should be allocated, among other ideas. Perhaps that communist newspapers/radios/ideas would finally appear instead of the pseudo-objectivity owned by the wealthiest, who even knows what socialism or capitalism means, and why 'passive incomes'/'lucrative properties' are a theft of the workers, for example ? Or any argument from our enemies, whose narrative is systematically silenced.
Some claim that our freedom of speech on the internet will make such ideas re-emerge, but they've already successfully censored any terrorist point of view, and are still not satisfied, making more than clear that their objective is to control what is said on the internet(, "FReEdOm of SpEecH BuT nOT freEDOm oF ConSeQUEnceS"), this year they're focused on the end of online anonymity, last year it was disinformation and the year before it was hate speech.

Anyway, what was interesting/new here was the mention of social medias, but having a majority of 'workers/readers'-owned mainstream medias is just one more thing that will never happen. Most socialist and republican newspapers belonged to their journalists in the XIXth century.
Just don't doubt that our system is the best, and that we should destroy any country aiming for a different one.

Amazon allegedly tricked people into signing up for Prime and then trapped them with a monthly subscription by making it next to impossible to cancel. This settlement fails to hold Amazon executives accountable for their actions and the fine is effectively a slap on the wrist – it’s less than 1-percent of Amazon’s revenue last year. When the government does not fight for real accountability, giant corporations like Amazon treat fines for potentially illegal conduct as just the cost of doing business and it risks incentivizing future lawbreaking that costs people money.

• Description: Unleash your dragon spirit in this action-packed side-scrolling brawler. Choose your hero, transform into mighty dragons, and team up with friends in 4-player co-op or battle it out in chaotic versus matches.
• Price: $19.99 ($15.99 till 9 October)
• Link: https://www.nintendo.com/us/store/products/heroes-of-mount-dragon-switch/

• DLC / Expansion of Rain World (Requires original game to play)
• Price: $14.99 ($13.49 till 9 October)
• Link: https://www.nintendo.com/us/store/products/rain-world-the-watcher-70050000059185-switch/