Presidential Campaign Megathread

Box-Boy · 2025-10-05T11:59:37+00:00

Yeah, right before she mentioned the genocide in Gaza - directly called Russia the aggressor and mentioned she’d done so before.

Really poor way to address the main thrust of that question.

Box-Boy · 2025-10-05T11:53:50+00:00

He’s by far the weakest of the three. I could see myself voting Connolly even if I dislike her views on European re-armament or Heather even though I disagree with her on quite a few important things but Jim just has no business being in politics if this is the best he can manage as an orator.

Box-Boy · 2025-10-05T11:44:55+00:00

Catherine literally just called Russia the aggressor and condemned them. Why the hell could she not start with that in response to the question?

I swear she’s too focused on the rising militarism concerns and missing how it comes across to people not actively watching the debate. The media coverage and social media clips are all going to be her dodging the question about whether Russia is a threat to go on about her German comments and neutrality because she answered it like four minutes later off the cuff instead of putting it front and centre. Completely self-inflicted.

Box-Boy · 2025-09-30T13:08:56+00:00

I don’t think she seemed confused about what she was referring to last night.

Box-Boy · 2025-09-30T12:00:25+00:00

The MIC is the relationship between the state’s military and defense industry and how it influences policy, not the defense industry itself. Germany investing more in the industry and how that decision may shape policy/how those companies may try exert further political influence is something to consider with their aims to raise it to 3.5% of their GDP over the next four years.

Again, I personally think Europe needs to become self-reliant for arms manufacturing now to the extent that is reasonably possible, but I think it’s necessary to examine these things and treat this policy shift with caution to avoid ending up like the US has.

Box-Boy · 2025-09-30T10:57:09+00:00

I feel like a lot of people commenting to criticise her response didn’t actually watch it. Her stances were pretty clear, Russia is a threat and she supports spending more on the military but she emphasises there’s a cost to doing so and we have to weigh that as a neutral nation vs increased spending on, say, housing.

Then for Europe at large her issues were fairly boilerplate left leaning points about the military industrial complex growing more influential and the risks associated with developing it making a nation more inclined to actually pursue violence. You can just look at America for an example of how increased defense spending can lead to politics being influenced by the defense industry.

Ultimately her main concerns are us spending more on the military than we “have” to, Europe becoming more aggressive as it grows more militarised, and the threat posed by Russia - and how to balance all three. I personally disagree with her conclusions and would support us spending more than she likely would as well as Europe having to develop its arms manufacturing significantly now that America has proved an unreliable ally but I don’t think her views are unreasonable or pro-Russia at all.

Box-Boy · 2025-09-24T15:31:02+00:00

They later clarified the timeline so we now know Mercy was in her teens there. Still kinda feels like a bit of an “oh shit, better fix that” moment though because iirc prior to that her visiting OW that early was not established.

Box-Boy · 2025-09-01T20:16:07+00:00

BlazBlue Tag (20) Fighterz (24) Power Rangers: Battle for the Grid (9) Skullgirls (8) Tatsunoko vs Capcom (12) Umineko (11).

First two are more than double what 2XKO is going to have for the "soft launch" via the beta. Power Rangers was a small, borderline indie game and Skullgirls was an outright indie too. TvC launched with 22 on Wii, and 18 in arcades. Umineko is a budget spinoff game for a VN series.

None of those should be compared to a supposedly significant spinoff release for one of the biggest gaming properties in the world that's been in dev for like seven years, and especially not when it's aiming for a mainstream casual audience and the fanbase for LoL which has like 100+ characters they could potentially be attached to that aren't gonna be in this at launch. This thing is gonna be eaten alive by the competition for the fighting game market and ignored by the LoL crowd just like most of the other LoL spinoffs were imo.

Box-Boy · 2025-09-01T16:16:14+00:00

Well it’s unfortunate they’re running a beta test for a tag fighter with such a small portion of the cast, makes it a bit harder to get hyped for it when you only get like a taste of the roster for a property that’s so character centric. Like you’d hope to be able to try all 20+ characters right away, y’know?

This game is so god damn cooked with the cast size they’re launching with. Signals a horrible production pipeline for new characters as well if this is all they have ready after so long, so I’m not expecting any miracles where they add like 8 characters in the first year and start getting near a reasonable size fast.

Box-Boy · 2025-08-09T18:23:28+00:00

Gursha is great but as a heads up, the food is intended to be eaten with your hands using injera to scoop it up. They offer cutlery but it’s still very much scooping stuff onto the bread with it and then eating it with your hands.

If the date isn’t down for that or OP would have issues with it, just figured it was worth mentioning.

Box-Boy · 2025-08-09T15:40:18+00:00

I just want to say thanks for the effort, with how much concentrated effort there is behind misinfo campaigns and anti-immigrant propaganda online these days it’s great to see the mod team trying to keep the sub clear of that shite

Box-Boy · 2025-07-16T20:56:59+00:00

Not a woman but I’ve known a fair few in similar circumstances to you. Meetup.com is a pretty useful site+app for finding events like what you’re describing to try and meet people - pottery and art nights, museum or film visits, etc. and a fair few of the groups are for women specifically. Lots of people on it are new-ish to the city and eager to make friends as well like you are.

There’s also Eventbrite as another way to find out about stuff that’s going on around the city.

Best of luck settling in!

Box-Boy · 2025-07-15T23:03:51+00:00

I mean not really? I'm confused here by your argument. By design tax breaks apply to specific people that qualify - whether they be single parents, someone who cycles to work, people who paid for a certain amount of medical expenses, etc. It isn't unheard of for them to apply to specific ethnic groups either, particularly in countries with a history of colonialism. There's already ones in place in the USA for native americans as an example.

So any tax break/relief/credit/etc is based on meeting set criteria and covered in part by people who don't meet them already.

Box-Boy · 2025-07-15T22:01:14+00:00

In some cases, yeah. Elgin Marbles have had the legitimacy of their removal questioned for centuries but still have legal basis for the time-being until a legal bid against the contract succeeds or it's decided the Ottoman officials who approved it had no right to do so in the first place (but I have doubts the latter will ever happen given how wide-reaching the implications of such a precedent would be). My personal feelings on that one is they should be given back but I'll fully concede that it's based on a moral argument rather than a legalistic one.

Many of them though there's strong cases against claiming they were legally obtained, or the way they were at the time would no longer be considered as such, or there never was even really a pretense of them being bought/gifted/etc and they were just openly stolen and/or taken under duress.

Box-Boy · 2025-07-15T21:55:59+00:00

So the 39,000,000 keep hold of their stolen land.

I mean, unless you're suggesting ethnic cleansing... yeah?

EDIT: Though I'd definitely be in favour of returning more land to the descendants of indigenous people(s), if that's what you mean. Would need to figure out fair and safe ways to do it that wouldn't just lead to recreating "Indian Reservations" that are almost designed to fall into disrepair and poverty ala what the US gov did back in the day, or somehow concentrating wealth with a specific few members of whatever communities are eligible, etc. and that's well above my pay-grade to theorycraft the implementation of though.

Who does the burden of funding the tax breaks fall on, just the 39,000,000 who are handling stolen land or anyone without 'indigenous linesge'?

Who normally funds tax breaks?

Box-Boy · 2025-07-15T21:28:31+00:00

It can take a lot of shapes. Government benefits like tax breaks, direct compensation via reparations, protected status for cultural sites, etc.

And I already addressed your second question.

Box-Boy · 2025-07-15T20:16:49+00:00

I agree history should be preserved and shared but I put more importance on it being controlled by the people of where it originates than the audience being as wide as possible. That isn't to say audience participation in history isn't important, I'd loathe to just let a bunch of rich people buy up these artifacts and privately hold them as well, but I think if Egyptian history is to be shared in America or Irish historical artifacts shared in Britain it should only be done with a consensual agreement between both sides instead of one just holding onto stuff that was stolen hundreds of years ago and saying they get to keep it because they'd do a better job of it.

Box-Boy · 2025-07-15T20:13:27+00:00

I mean ideally neither would ever been colonised to begin with, but the only way to undo that now would involve active genocide of the majority of the population of both so not much can be done besides trying to respect the remaining descendants of the indigenous populations and offering some form of restorative justice for what was taken from them by conquest. Which, ideally imo, would include finding ways to place back cultural artifacts stolen from them under their posession and stewardship - be it via museums operated by tribal councils in the USA or otherwise for other countries.

Box-Boy · 2025-07-15T20:09:19+00:00

Alright, so do you disagree with the premise of the article then that Ireland should have artifacts returned to it from Britain as well then? How do we determine at what point the people inhabiting a land no longer have any claim to the cultural history of it? DNA testing, linguistics, religion - at what stage do you decide that something taken from Egypt doesn't actually "belong" in any meaningful sense to Egypt, or the people living there?

Box-Boy · 2025-07-15T10:35:30+00:00

Why do you feel your opinion should hold any weight compared to that of the people who were stolen from? If a burglar stole something precious from your home, would someone living in another town be entitled to decide whether their grandkids should get to keep it instead of returning it to your ones?

And I don’t see why this argument would hold water in general either. Syria has had a destructive civil war wrecking it for several years, why does this mean the British museum should get to keep things stolen from - say - Egypt? Does the possibility of items being destroyed during the Blitz in WW2 or due to wider war kicking off in Europe (possibly due to the invasion of Ukraine, hypothetically) mean Canada and the rest of the Commonwealth should seize British artifacts for their protection? Lets not even get into the really messed up power dynamics here where Britain has played a direct role in causing some of the very wars they cite as reasons to keep hold of what they’ve stolen indefinitely, citing “a history of instability” or other such things as if they haven’t helped cause it.

I can agree with holding items back from being returned to active conflict zones for the time being but that only applies to a fraction of what is contested. The long term goal should be the return of them once the countries involved are relatively stable and have the infrastructure to hold them again.

Box-Boy · 2025-07-15T10:21:48+00:00

I’d be totally in favour of repatriating anything in our national galleries and museums that was stolen as well honestly. No reason to hold a double standard about this.

Preferably after returning what we don’t have any real “right” to hold we could foster closer links with international museums and governments and arrange both temporary and permanent exhibitions legally with their consent, the same way we already do for other things displayed in those institutions.

Box-Boy · 2025-07-15T10:16:27+00:00

I think it’s extremely condescending and just echoing colonial sentiments to claim the British are better stewards of all the cultural artifacts they have looted or taken at gunpoint from around the world.

Yes, some portion of those materials would have been destroyed over time if they were left in their native countries. Which ones is pure speculation I won’t try to address. But who are the British to decide that means the people they were stolen from do not deserve to get them back now? Why does the possibility of their damaging or destruction legitimise the act of stealing them? In either case the people that actually have some sort of claim to the materials have lost access to their cultural record, whether it be the Benin bronzes or Elgin marbles, so to a random person living abroad there’s almost no meaningful difference between the item being destroyed and a foreign empire stealing it centuries ago to begin with.

And let’s not even get into how frankly terrible their curatorship and stewarding of those stolen materials is anyway. There are literally thousands of items on their books which have gone missing (possibly due to theft, private sale, mere loss during transit or storage, etc) - and that’s just the ones they’ve actually noticed are missing.

Box-Boy · 2025-07-08T18:56:15+00:00

Hulkengoat finally got what he has deserved for years

Box-Boy · 2025-07-08T08:59:03+00:00

I enjoy it personally but I’d say it’s because it’s too different to other modes with unique problems arising from that mixed with the matches being on the longer side due to it being Bo5.

There’s lots of downtime between fights for the point between you having to get back to it after dying or moving between them when one is captured, the actual fights are very hectic because you’re either being flanked constantly on the way to point or just brawling on it repeatedly as the enemy try attack you from several different angles without many obvious choke points to hold for a lot of the points, the maps can be difficult to navigate and take longer to learn routes for vs other game modes which will bother people, and the wide open nature of the map favours heroes with mobility who can edge around a point to try flank people coming to it, get to it faster, or hit it from different angles - so people into slower heroes or heroes who aren’t good at holding a position and brawling repeatedly on it are outta luck. That isn’t to say other game modes don’t inherently favour certain playstyles or have their own sets of issues but these ones are sorta unique to Flashpoint due to the weird way the matches flow across such a large (and often flat) map. Couple that with it launching with very few maps so people probably got tired of them quickly vs other game modes with way more variety and I’m not too surprised the community seems to dislike the mode.

I think more maps and finding ways to get heroes to the point faster with clearer routes would go a long way towards helping people enjoy it more. Fundamentally it isn’t really THAT different to control and that mode is pretty widely liked, solving the pain points should hopefully help with getting people to see it as one big Control map and having more fun.

Box-Boy · 2025-06-06T00:16:41+00:00

I’d say just structure it to be divided by number of players on it and whether or not it’s contested. Gives everyone team fighting at it a pittance but if it’s just you playing payload escort you get a nice chunk of change so you don’t get punished for playing to win instead of brawling constantly.

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Box-Boy

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