This reminds me of a story idea I had for a novel.

The police of a fantasy world are enacting blatant brutality and are low on accountability. A separate agency headed by a heroic character announces that some faction of terrorists has stolen a set of uniforms for these officers. They further clarify that citizens can identify genuine officers in this way:

• Officers will always identify themselves by name upon request
• Officers will never hide their face
• Officers will never attack citizens without being first threatened

Otherwise, citizens are encouraged to use weapons to protect themselves from unidentified men posing as police. (The obvious conclusion there is; this other agency stole the uniforms themselves and threw them away, just to provoke that change in behavior)

The world has gone too long without game developers returning criticism to fans. Some game devs don’t serve their fans well and deserve a blasting, but that’s generally a minority. Most of the time, gamers in online spaces are the same sort of Karen at the register saying “The customer is always right” every single day, and they‘ve needed to take a step back for a long time.

Corollary: I play an online game that’s full of glitches. I’m upset at the dev about it, but also patient because I know programming is hard, and I’m sure they get frustrated at those bugs too.

New Animaniacs lyrics (no really):

“The trolls will say we’re so passé but we were meta first!”

If US Health Insurance companies are so great at the service they provide, why don’t they take their business internationally? All these other countries must be so exasperated with their useless, inadequate federal healthcare programs.

Oh, wait, they’re not.

It was far faster and easier to build up a feed of enjoyable content on BlueSky. My Mastodon feed has sat almost completely empty, and I’ve only been able to find a few news-reposters there.

And I’m tech-savvy. Imagine how it is for other social media users.

Every time some incel wants to start a conversation about DA:V, I just point them to Baldur’s Gate 3.

That game is inclusive and diverse, and also fucks - both in the “adult content” sense, disproving their myths about diversity somehow siding together with censorship, and in the quality sense.

The dramatic fall in writing has happened across the industry and should be no surprise to anyone.