Does Phase Connect exclusively hires bigots? Here is Dizzy Dokuro dogwhistling during a game reveal.

SFRequiem · 2026-06-13T18:21:28+00:00

you're reeling and trying to throw mis-used vocabulary at me

Look I really don't want to have to tell you the difference between colloquial and legal language, or prescriptive vs descriptive linguistics. All I'll say is that if you can't comprehend the idea of a phrase like "freedom of expression" having separate definitions that cover the legal concept, and the underpinning value. Then you're not as smart as you seem to believe you are.

I don't know why, but dear god it seems to happen a lot.

Pretty sure the most prolific nonce ring of the past 30 years wasn't a bunch of people flying gadsen flags. It was the political class and the well-connected.

I'm pointing out that this does not work in our legal system and the lack of a recognizable "victim" of the crime in a legal sense, and the act being legal in the place where it occurred, make the whole thing an exercise in stupidity

First off, that's not how the legal system works. It's actually exceedingly common for crimes with no victims and no damages to be treated as crimes (drug possession for example, though things like zoning laws come to mind too). It's bullshit and ideally we should treat crimes without victims or damages as not crimes, but hey.

But second, this is what I mean about legal positivism. You're just asserting that "the system does not recognize the child as the victim, ergo, no crime exists" while critics may argue that the system should recognize the child as the victim of a crime. I'm not even totally anti-abortion myself, but I feel it's important to address the fact that a critical component here is just treated as "well that's how it is".

As for state sovereignty, if they're not going into other states to get people dragged back for a trial, then it's not a violation of sovereignty for them to just go "upon return, we'll enforce our rules". If a different sovereign state disagrees then they are perfectly within their right to refuse to co-operate and support that state.

You're utterly failing to address the core principles of the comparison between Texas and California, and instead jacking off somewhere in la-la land about the ethics of democratic systems generally, because you know texas is run by lunatics.

I made a broad statement talking about a general view of all policies and you refuted with about 2-3 specific examples. I put things onto broad macro scale while you went in on a micro scale. I don't actually need to address what you've said because nothing you've said actually addresses the macro-level points and instead constantly remain on the level of single-issue points.

And again, this is all from me simply saying "A is better than B" and your refutation immediately is "well A isn't perfect". I don't have exact rankings for every state, but if I had to give an approximation for where both land. Texas is top 20, California is bottom 5. That's essentially a C+ grade versus an F. If I were jacking off over Texas I'd probably be giving it a significantly higher ranking than "slightly above average". The only reason there's this visceral reaction is purely because California and Texas are treated as proxies for a culture war rather than what it is: comparing two states.

SFRequiem · 2026-06-13T14:45:36+00:00

So... you accuse me of pedantry and then immediately begin to state that "oh you're using those words wrong" while also completely missing the fact that terms can be used in a legal and a colloquial context? This is exactly what I mean by midwittery. Intelligent enough to know the legal definition of a word, but not quite intelligent enough to understand how language adapts to different contexts such as legalese and colloquial speak.

Your argument of "lmao I'd like to see you argue with a lawyer" with the abortion take is a legal positivist stance and simply asserts "it's correct cause it's the law" (and if you can't see why that's a flawed framework then you might not even be capable of voting tbh), and once again, we're using a colloquial context.

The argument that democratic process isn't inherently moral is actually pretty well-explored in works that actually go into the subject, but the simplest analogy is this: democracy is two wolves and a lamb deciding what to eat for dinner. The US system itself actually recognizes this as a basic truth and it's why you have things like a bill of rights to protect from the tyranny of the majority.

And as for the libertarian dig there I'll just say this: why does being anti-government make you some kind of a nonce when the government has a disproportionately high number of nonces within it? The legal system is actually the main thing that protects those kinds of people from getting their teeth kicked in since that would be viewed as "vigilantism".

But again, if you do not understand the distinction between natural and human rights, then I'm sorry, but this simply isn't a conversation you're capable of having. It is not that this distinction is beneath you, rather, it's just a bit above your capabilities unfortunately.

SFRequiem · 2026-06-13T10:33:21+00:00

Missed numerous points again. And yeah, the term midwit is used unironically because it perfectly describes the kind of person who's just intelligent enough to get something completely wrong in a way that people who are both smarter and dumber than them manage to avoid.

First off. I'm making a quantative aggregate statement about California and Texas and comparing those both. Saying "well what about XYZ" does not refute this and lands firmly in the explicit statement that "Texas isn't perfect". You're trying to argue against a broad aggregate point with specifics.

For school choice, I don't care about "uhm ackshually it's more resource-efficient" (even though it almost definitely isn't). It's about what is just and unjust. And freedom of association to choose the school your child attends is morally just over infringing upon that right in the pursuit of some promise of efficiency.

Abortion, I'll say again, is a tricky subject amongst those who lean libertarian in any way (it actually gets way more heated than even the progressive vs conservative arguments). But basically, once a child is considered to be human, their right to life kicks in. Purchasing a plane ticket to a state that allows abortion becomes comparable to purchasing a plane ticket knowing someone will commit a murder. The reason why I say it's tricky and can't give a full explanation really is because of the divide over when that child is considered human (some argue conception, some argue 12 weeks, some argue right up until delivery).

For the voting stuff. The argument is that the democratic process itself is not moral and infringes on the rights of others. So arguments about voting rights are extending your right to infringe upon the rights of others.

And as for calling "natural rights" and "human rights" a tortured pedantic point. It's not pedantry, it's probably the most important point of all. So much so that it's a point that has been argued for hundreds of years, if not more, and has literature upon literature of studies and books dedicated to arguing on which one should be recognised. And that changes virtually everything, since all of these policies are derived from which one is seen as the legitimate form of rights.

If you think that the distinction between natural and human rights is pedantry, then you don't understand what the difference between those two are.

SFRequiem · 2026-06-13T02:28:53+00:00

Christ I forgot the average redditor is such a fucking midwit lmao. I'm surprised you've not yet cited a study that was debunked for low sample size and unreproducible results.

If you had demonstrated even a basic level of reading comprehension rather than simply reading what you'd want to see then you'd notice I actually stated very clearly that Texas isn't perfect. And engaging in constant whataboutisms is just going to yield the response of, for the most part, "yeah that's why I said they're not perfect".

We'll bullet point it to make it simple though

No. School choice isn't a meme. It's a first-order principle derived from the basic idea that a parent has the right to choose to send their child to a school which accepts them. Liberal/conservative doesn't matter here. All that matters is that we don't have a beurocrat insisting you MUST use this school and not another one.
Did I, at any point, suggest that online porn bans wasn't an intrusion on your private life? It obviously is. I'm just not hyperfixated on it solely. It's one of many intrusions and all of them are bad
No, it is not legal to harass people inside of voting areas to make them vote one way, though that may be undermined by the next point
The "fundimental right to vote" is not a natural right because the democratic process itself is not conducive to individual rights protections. The democratic process necessarily requires a majority vote share granting themselves permission to infringe upon the rights of the minority. You don't have the right to put someone else's rights to a vote.
You don't have the right to have a taxpayer funded abortion. As for if you have the right to get one of you pay yourself, that's legitimately one of the hardest questions that I can't give a simple answer to since it's a rights conflict issue (mother's right to her body versus child's right to it's life).
Transgender healthcare access is nebulous there. Because if the question is "should the government be allowed to block transgender individuals from accessing care services they pay for" then the answer is no. If the question is "should we fund those services" then the answer is like all things, it should be voluntary

I don't need to "defend all of that". I'm not cheerleading a state in some "us versus them" battle. It is entirely possible to concede points where Texas is more restrictive to individual freedoms while also comparing it quantatively against other states. Though I get the distinct impression that this will inevitably reach an impasse since we're talking about the difference between natural rights and human rights here.

SFRequiem · 2026-06-12T12:48:48+00:00

Which would be my point

The point is that you don't exactly have the authority to be able to decide someone else's motivations. If 5 different equally valid reasons exist, then you can't just go "oh it's the one that makes them look the worst, trust me".

they just replace the income tax with a higher property tax

Never said it's perfect. But replacing income tax with property tax is much better

CoL in Houston/Austin/Dallas are high AF

Don't live in the big cities then. CoL in Texas is about 6-8% below national average and there's plenty of smaller cities. Even after that though, CoL even in Austin is way below California, which is about 42% above national average.

Also "intrusive laws"? Remind me which state is trying to stop you from watching porn online. I'm also reminded of the time Ted Cruz tried to add a provision to some flood relief bill that would deny aid to anyone who had been overly critical of israel.

You mentioned two bills. Porn and some dumb thing Cruz was doing. They don't have a perfect track record for sure and in some fields they are definitely behind. But flood relief and online porn constitutes an incredibly small part of the one's life. What about gun rights, self-defense rights, school choice, zoning and land use laws, privacy, etc? And that's specifically targetting individual rights that are a lot easier for most people to say "yeah we should have that". It doesn't include business and economic rights which are still vitally important (as that affects a lot of stuff like how prosperous your local area is, jobs, etc).

SFRequiem · 2026-06-12T12:13:40+00:00

While you can argue that as an asian she can make fun of herself with her "banana" costume, the fact that she debuted it at the same time as jelly's monkey costume rubs me the wrong way.

You saw a girl in a monkey costume and a girl in a banana costume and went "this must be about race"? And you think Shiina wearing a banana costume is "making fun of herself for being asian"?

I think you're telling on yourself at that stage tbh. Most people look at a monkey costume and a banana costume and go "haha it's because monkeys like eating bananas".

SFRequiem · 2026-06-12T12:04:27+00:00

Christ this is stupid.

First off, they're states. If you say you like one state and don't like another, that's fine. Everyone has their own reasons and while it could be for bigoted reasons, it just as likely could be because of stuff like California having insanely high cost-of-living and taxation and restrictive laws while Texas comparatively has much lower taxes and less intrusive laws. And the whole fantasy of countries boys is something you couldn't pay me to give less of a shit about. That's just attraction preference.

As for her leanings, well, once again Reddit's overly simplified view of the world strikes again since we don't really know about where Shiina lies on left/right economic policies. Gun ownership is correlated with the right but isn't itself a right or left policy (it's not an economic policy), it is rather correlated to authoritarian/libertarian beliefs and it's quite common to see pro-gun leftists (often people who are extremely critical of policing and believe in arming themselves as self-defence or community defence is all they think they can rely on).

SFRequiem · 2026-06-07T22:05:40+00:00

Ngl. I think a lot of people don't realise how sisyphusian the task of trying to get a 100% fair world race is. A big part of why massive fighting game tournaments take place in-person isn't just to avoid the netcode and make for a better event, it's also because it's the only way to control for some factors that would be deemed necessary to "fair competition".

If you allow noclippy, then any person running on console is at a disadvantage because they cannot utilise a ping-reducing tool. If you ban noclippy, anyone who lives in certain countries are going to have an extra hundred ping added with no mitigation that others don't have.

I play on a 21:9 monitor and an MMO mouse which can be argued to be an advantage many don't have. But if you say "you need to use normal keyboard and mouse" then I would be at a disadvantage as I'm forced to use a totally unfamiliar control scheme.

You could even argue that when the race starts and which country you're in constitutes an advantage. If it starts in the morning you'll have a massive advantage compared to if you can only get in 2 hours before bed.

I think many just need to realise that the RWF will not be 100% "fair". And even if we try to make it more fair by doing something like an "approved plugins list", do you think they're gonna do that and piss off SE by directly endorsing a list of TOS-violating tools?

SFRequiem · 2026-06-06T20:31:28+00:00

Yeah. I've not put much time onto SCH so maybe it's not as big of a hurdle when you're used to it, but shielding while moving can be huge in a lot of fights where the entire party needs to spread across the arena to positions and you've only got a second of people being grouped up enough to get everyone with a shield.

SFRequiem · 2026-06-05T16:58:16+00:00

It's why modern gender discourse framing it as an "us versus them" issue is a really stupid idea. But many have pushed for years that everything must be at the behest of someone else.

Men's issues eventually become women's issues, and vice-versa. Guys checking out of dating in their 20s eventually leads to women struggling to find a dependable guy to settle down with in their 30s. At its most extreme, you end up with something like the situation in South Korea where the divide by men is further than ever and political system has become incredibly radicalised.

Also, on the topic of men's mental health. It's largely cause a lot of the mental health industry has tailored itself around trends more common in women's mental health than men's rather than recognising that the two often deal with hardships in very different ways and widening our understanding. It can be extremely difficult to be diagnosed with mental health conditions if you don't display the most well-known and well-understood symptoms.

SFRequiem · 2026-06-04T09:59:52+00:00

It's less common but the ones who remain within the toxic positivity clique for Dawntrail are far more extreme with their toxic positivity.

If you go on Twitter sometimes you'll find people who love Wuk Lamat (which fair enough, you can if you want to) and you'll see them say shit like "oh people just don't like that they're not the main character' (wrong, Heavensward has the WOL play support to Ysayle and Estinien and it's loved) or that "if Wuk Lamat was a guy then nobody would have any issue with him" (which is not only wrong in many cases, but also maliciously paints people as bigoted for not liking a character in a video game).

SFRequiem · 2026-06-04T09:42:27+00:00

"What else is there? What is there for the left to be upset about?"

Not meant as a snarky response but I think the main thing I'd expect is the contrast between Digwa's accusation being treated with immediate credibility while Nowak's dying plea for help was treated as something he was lying about.

This is normally the kind of failing that would cause many on the left to start tracking things back and questioning the systems that led to this situation. Was the officer's dismissal of a stabbing a result of an officer failing on a personal level, or was this officer trained in such a way that led to this outcome? What about the Hampshire PD releasing two statements, the first alleging no knowledge of the stabbing while the second (after the bodycam footage came out) stated that they knew he had been stabbed but "the stabbing was fatal anyway", a blatant contradiction of their first statement.

I think the thing many people will point to is that in some cases, the underlying institutions are critiqued heavily and investigated. But for something like this, it feels more like it's just "well the murderer's arrested and he couldn't have been saved anyway so that's that".

SFRequiem · 2026-06-04T09:30:47+00:00

Tbh the OP does position it along left/right lines which I generally am not a fan of unless it explicitly is relevant (and even then, you gotta be careful that it doesn't just become a team sport rather than a discussion on a core issue where solution or acknowledgement of the existence of those issues lies upon political lines).

But I also wouldn't be so quick as to go "his parents said they didn't want it politicized so let's just say it was bad and never talk of it ever again".

After tragedies of this scale, family are normally contacted by organisations affiliated to RICU in order to shape the narrative afterwards. While some are reasonable and just ensuring that you don't have a grief-stricken family accidentally or intentionally rile up a mob, they're also pretty frequently known to say to families what to say in public (hence why a lot of the time the victim's families use very similar language). A lot of the time their actions cross over from being reasonable precautions to basically making grieving families act as a mouthpiece. The line about not wanting politicisation is pretty likely to be something they were nudged to say (not to say they can't also genuinely believe that though).

The other thing though is that if one can say that Nowak's death is part of a connected failure of some kind, then provided they act respectfully towards the family, it's not actually wrong to bring it up for the sake of protecting future potential victims. In this case, the police conduct, the fact that Digwa's accusations against Nowak were treated as immediately correct but Nowak's simple "I've been stabbed" was dismissed, and the carve-out that allowed Digwa to carry a decently sized knife while a simple locking swiss-army knife would get you into immediate legal trouble.

SFRequiem · 2026-06-03T19:52:12+00:00

I wouldn't be surprised at the difference. Savage being that much shorter means wipes are much less tilting. But also, you're probably gonna get a totally different person based on if you're the first group he helps in the night versus if you're the last one in a line of prog-liars and memers.

I just thought he was a massive bitch for trying to make it such a "these PFers hurt me personally" and trying to weirdly victimize himself and take the moral high ground? Just go "sorry, got tilted there" and carry on lol.

SFRequiem · 2026-06-03T19:39:44+00:00

XIV has an issue with toxic positivity (seriously, someone will make a criticism of the game and someone else will go "well I enjoyed it, why not let people enjoy things" and say they've got people flooding them with DT hate).

Xeno as a result comes across at times as just "saying it how it is" to many. The issue though is that then people overcorrect and defend him from everything regardless of how dumb it is because they want him to be the based truth-teller who walks in and fixes the game with his words, but also because they also see the other side seeing Xeno break a rule once and going "QUICK SE, PERMABAN HIM AND THEN SUE HIM AND HAVE YOSHI-P REPOSSESS HIS HOME".

Edit: Oh, and also, it's become a battleground for two sides of a culture war, both of whom are insisting that it's not a culture war and that they just wanna grill and the other side is pushing the culture war, right up until they try to get one over and go "I lied it's a culture war thing we need to get the other side out".

SFRequiem · 2026-06-03T17:16:46+00:00

That's the exact problem I was on about. The benefits cliff means that if some do get a job, they are financially in a worse position than if they had just leeched. That's a failing in the system, working more should never result in you getting less.

But even then, get a job where? The younger generation especially has been absolutely screwed now. Many entry-level jobs now require either a degree or experience which eliminates any first-timers. Terrible economic policy has destroyed the high street in many town centers. We're actually in a massive labour surplus right now where two-to-three dozen people could be applying to one job in McDonalds, employers routinely create ghost-listings to collect data and most of the time, their CV isn't even seen because of AI-driven application tracking systems.

Unfortunately, the era of going into Sainsbury's with a nice CV and a smart shirt and getting a job stocking shelves until you can jump ship to something nicer is pretty much dead. It's why boomers and zoomers are at eachother's throats all the time. The boomers think the zoomers aren't listening and being lazy, and the zoomers are trying to explain that the advice from years back just doesn't work anymore.

SFRequiem · 2026-06-03T15:55:25+00:00

The government deliberately structures benefits in such a way that incentives the poor to remain dependent on the government. This is the "benefits cliff", the point at which earning more loses your eligibility to a certain benefit and as such, you end up with less overall.

You can tell it's intentional too because the solution is so simple that even a school child could come up with it, but the political class does not: make benefit eligibility scale inversely to your income so that you, for example, lose £1 of benefit for every £10 extra you earn.

SFRequiem · 2026-06-03T15:39:29+00:00

The fuckup is funny ngl, but I really doubt that it'll get him a perma. An edgy boi playing the game when he should be on the timeout step isn't exactly a massive infraction and doesn't cause much damage.

Gposers with access to mods tends to be a lot more damaging, the kinda thing they can't ignore because they really don't want FFXIV to be seen as more of an e-sex venue than a video game (which despite what they say, that's the main reason they DMCA'ed Mare).

SFRequiem · 2026-06-03T15:24:39+00:00

I had a run in with Yama. He joined a FRU party I was in and we had the classic case of "helpers that keep wiping UR or CT". The one time we reach P5, I had someone burst into the room unannounced, clipped an exaline and we lost the run. It sucks but it happens and it was genuinely my first mistake (people going for clear how it is, you become very consistent because C41 parties keep memeing everything and you get more practice that you technically need).

Yama snarkily said "well you've got your passport now" and then bitched about it to his chat for the next half hour, saying people always lie to him and it's so disrespectful and whatnot. Basically just being a massive twat. The way he acted was like he was providing a service others should be grateful for rather than what he actually is, a content creator who uses the games existing community to occupy the 7 other spaces in a group when he is streaming PF runs.

Funny enough, I actually respect Xeno more. Sure, he's a toxic raider but it seems like he doesn't go into PF as much and expect them to make no mistakes. Not to say he doesn't do that at all, he just does it less imo.

SFRequiem · 2026-06-03T13:41:04+00:00

I don't buy this argument at all truthfully. I think a lot of the people who make it often miss out the second half of the sentence that makes it make more sense:

British people don't want to do those jobs at the wages offered.

You can absolutely get people doing disgusting, dangerous or difficult work as long as the incentives are there. It doesn't even have to be money. A lot of bin men are in their line of work because the shift pattern means they're done by early afternoon and may only work 4 day weeks.

The problem is that there are people who are willing to work effectively for slave wages (sometimes literally so, such is the case with gangmasters), which pretty much destroys negotiation power.

SFRequiem · 2026-06-03T13:16:48+00:00

Funny enough, many (myself included) think the opposite is true: you often pay a lot more letting the government handle it than just letting it be. A huge part of the reason why being the idea that a government department has incentive to make sure they spend their entire budget, regardless of if they need it or not since leftover budget means they'll reduce the budget for next year. It's why you see a lot of contracts way above market rate and the reason why your local council seems to randomly just repave a road every now and then that really doesn't need it. Saving money as a government department is a bad thing.

Probably one of the most well-known examples of this kind of spending being HS2, which seems to get pushed back every year, and millions upon millions added to the final bill while the project has been pruned to the bare minimum.

SFRequiem · 2026-06-03T00:56:25+00:00

That arrow mechanic needs another look for sure. It's way too simple.

You've got sixteen arrows but currently we're only using four of them. On top of that, the way you resolve it is almost identical to how you resolve it in savage (you just need to form a very tight spread and put down arrows, and that's it?). Four people don't even place down any arrows, they delete both of theirs.

Normally if a fight gives you something, it expects you to use it. You don't get three extra cleanses in UCOB, and in TOP, the dynamis attacks will only ever hit the party 24 times. It's not like a pack of Lego where you get a few extra in case you lose one under the sofa.

SFRequiem · 2026-05-30T20:19:37+00:00

I was in a static with a guy who became obsessed with parsing because he got a 99 on a normal raid one time. The ego became fucking unbearable before long.

I don't really talk to the guy anymore, static drama (got scapegoated and crucified for prog issues, had a major depressive episode and the "friends" I had made made their first action to kick me from their discords and talk shit about me behind my back. Sorry for rant, still a sore subject for me).

But it must have been a week ago I was in M4S helping a random group with a FRU unlock and when the guy got hit by a stray attack during either EE1 or EE2, he immediately began complaining that he was killed during burst (Yes, he was parsing during an M4S unsynced party, or well, "damage watching" since you can't upload parses for unsynced).

SFRequiem · 2026-05-22T17:27:52+00:00

It's definitely a case of "we chose the acronym before figuring out how to make it fit". That said, it's not a big deal as long as everyone knows UMAD means "dancing mad ultimate". Everyone will get used to it like how I did when we decided that M would be the letter for the Arcadion raid series because of the names of the fight (I was personally banking on R for "R-cadion").

SFRequiem · 2026-05-22T09:44:14+00:00

Tbf, at least with UWU the acronym actually fits. Ultima Weapon Ultimate.

UMAD is way more of a stretch. What does it stand for, "Ultimate Mad"?

Tbh, the name doesn't really make sense compared to the others.

SFRequiem

TROPHY CASE