That's exactly my point, you are taking the stance that people didn't buy alan wake because it wasn't on steam, to a degree that's true, i'm saying that i think a larger proportion didn't buy it specifically because it was on EGS.

If it were released as a game you could buy and play sans-platform, then i'd agree with you. It'd certainly see less sales than a steam release, because steam is where everyone is.

My stance is basically if you remove steam entirely, Standalone Sales > EGS. Add steam back in and you get Steam > Standalone > EGS

Think in terms of food, you're basically saying the it's the fault of the 3.5 star monopolistic countrywide chain fast food place that nobody want's to eat at the recently health-inspection-failing 1 star food-poisoning cafe.

Is there a monopoly, sure, is the competition so bad people avoid it regardless of the monopoly, also yes.

If you were using something like GOG as an example, i'd fully agree with you, but EGS has seemingly infinite funds and they still managed to release something so bad nobody wants to use it, even for "free" games.

It's not even just the platform, epic as a company have a reputation, so they have to also overcome that, which they have not.

That’s a terrifying amount of power that people aren’t bothered by

Historically there's been no need to be worried, generally, i agree that's not ideal, but again name a viable comparable alternative.

even though we’re talking about company that’s smug about selling gambling to children.

You mean as opposed to the company that actually lost a class action regarding loot boxes in their game targeted at children?

You aren't even wrong about this but "People don't buy games from this company who famously lost a lawsuit regarding gambling targeted at kids because this other company who also do sketchy kids gambling things are ..better at PR?" isn't a convincing argument.

Everyone should be better at this, but they aren't.

I will preface this with : I have many games that are not in steam that I play regularly, I understand this isn't the norm, I have zero paid games in EGS and outside of checking the platform I never use it.

Alan wake on EGS is a terrible example to support your claim.

It's like being upset that a fancy new car hasn't recouped costs when it's only available in 4 custom made dealers that are only open half the time and the manufacturer refuses to allow it to be sold in all the places people normally buy cars.

Sure, that is certainly a choice but it's a choice that would have been part of the risk assessment before the money was sunk.

Steam does have a monopoly, because it works and there isn't anything better.

There is a bit of resistance to switching, most game libraries are in steam because it's been the best option for a very long time.

If EGS worked well and epic (outside of unreal engine) wasn't such a shitshow the platform would be fine.

It's doesn't and they aren't so it's not.

It can't compete on features, support or stability so it tried exclusivity, that hasn't worked out for them.

Steam has its own shit, sure, that percentage is some apple level monopolist bullshit.

Name a comparable, viable alternative?

I somewhat agree with most of that, that particular brand of toxic masculinity is gaining traction and that is a problem.

Let's not pretend that this is new though, almost the entirety of modern western civilization has been patriarchal to a fairly extreme degree, this is just the latest flavour.

I'm not dismissing the current problems with all of that, just pointing out that the problem of enforced gender/sex specific division isn't new these are just the latest grifters, it's also not specific to men ,with differing problems for all sides.

This is a systemic societal problem and will almost certainly need solutions that acknowledge that, otherwise you are treating only the symptoms.

None of which is an actual answer to my original question.

That would imply an "essence" of masculinity that was not defined by it's lack of femininity.

That somebody would be pushed towards an ideal of masculinity and dissuaded from an ideal of femininity implies that both exist.

Not necessarily completely separate, but still existing at least partially individually.

I'm still confused over what is meant by

The essence of being male is to not be female.

Perhaps I'm missing something obvious or i have some bias getting in the way of my understanding.

Fair enough, i could probably also do with being a bit less sarcastic to things that might just be honest mistakes.

As a genuine question, what point are you maintaining, I've lost the thread and don't know which one you mean?

I'm not into any of the assistant ecosystems, they creep me out too much to have them listening in.

I've got my HA instance set up for independent VA integrations and I've had a few tries and using pi's with microphone and speaker hats as custom endpoints, they worked okay-ish but it fell by the wayside eventually and i've just been waiting on this kind of first party-promoted kind of announcement to get back in to it.

absolutely all of this

To clarify, I don’t believe in the creation of any deliberately biased system.

As in you don't believe it's possible for a biased system to exist or you don't think it's possible to do it deliberately, something else ?

but I believe the main societal issue is overwhelmingly one of wealth disparity.

I agree, and the idea of providing a baseline humanitarian standard of living isn't impossible it's just very unlikely without some hefty and painful foundational changes to how societies are currently working.

I’m not assigning a moral value when I use the phrase “disproportionate benefit”. I’m alluding to the disproportionate degree of poverty experienced by African-Americans. Poverty relief should therefore benefit them more. If there was no differential distribution of wealth with respect to race, the benefits of poverty relief would be neutral with respect to race.

Additionally, the person I responded to is very clearly describing a situation related to a student’s socioeconomic status. I absolutely believe some kind of “blind” application process is necessary to minimise the impact of a number of possible prejudices held by the admissions team.

Fair enough, it seems i entirely misunderstood what you meant, my apologies.

Is that a thing you have to apply to some formal committee for?

Or do we have to ask you specifically whether or not it qualifies?

Ooh maybe there's ASCII symbol for it like ® or © ?

I'm not disagreeing with most of what you said but throwing money at a problem would have significantly higher return on investment if that money wasn't being slurped up by the capitalist machine.

It also might work a bit better if the country as a whole hadn't been institutionalising profit driven medical sciences for the last 100 years.

Or to use an analogy.

It's like pointing out that "just throwing oil" at a car engine that hasn't been serviced in 150k is a failure of oil to fix the problem.

I mean, yes, technically you have a problem, you put oil in and the problem didn't go away, but is the problem really the oil ?

In this analogy capitalism is the oil thieves, draining your oil out of the bottom of the engine while you fill it up.

I don’t agree with this. Operation warp speed was Trump’s project. When it comes to COVID, I feel like he was pro-vaccine since the beginning. Back then it was also the democrats who were expressing scepticism about the safety of it because they didn’t trust Trump and felt like the vaccine was rushed and not properly tested.

Fair enough, i don't agree that he was pro-vaccine, rather pro self-interest, but outcome wise i'm not sure it matters.

Assuming his stance wasn't antivax, it could be argued that he could have done much more with his platform to push for vaccine adoption, given the clear anti-vax stance a large proportion of his base had/has taken, but that's an entirely different argument.

He has said sceptical things about masks that has caused distrust and conspiracies in the MAGA population. I don’t see the need to defend him on that one.

Its less about you defending him and more about omitting a position that conflicts with the narrative of the reply you provided.

Emphasising the point that correlates with your (in general , not you specifically) narrative and omitting the point that doesn't, is a common bad faith tactic.

Perhaps that isn't what you were doing, but it could easily be interpreted that way, and that's what i think you were asking for when requesting examples.

Sure, but what I mean is that simply being downvoted doesn’t alone mean the information is incorrect and the opposite is true as well.

Sure, but it was written in such a way as to imply that downvote = "people don't like the truth".

Which is a classic bad faith stance to take.

That you weren't actually taking that stance is clear now, but not from the original text ( at least to me )

There’s comments in this tread with false info that’s being upvoted.

Agreed.

Oh it’s definitely a right-wing thing but I wouldn’t exactly blame Trump for all of it. He even got booed at his own rally for telling people to get vaccinated.

In a context where you know this was after a relatively long period of him not doing that.

It's disingenuous to the point of bad faith to present that as a bolstering remark (with no context until someone called you on it) to reduce accountability.

This reply was also in response to someone using masks and vaccines as conversation points, you responded to this by citing an event out of context and completely ignoring the mention of masks.

Downvotes simply mean people don’t like what I’m saying - not that it’s wrong

Also incorrect, they can dislike what you are saying and it can also be wrong, they aren't mutually exclusive.

Given the quality of your other responses i'd assume you know this (though i could be incorrect), so presenting it as a fact is either an oversight or intentional.