I wonder if it’s because they know the first few subs to be forced open will make headlines, but the second batch most likely won’t. So by starting with fringe subs it paints the picture that’s it’s not the bigger or more important subs that are participating in the blackout.

I wouldn’t be surprised to see the /r/antiwork mod’s disastrous appearance on Fox News become a talking point again paired with this, so that when people hear “Reddit forces mods to…” that’s the sort of person the public pictures.

Just a heads up so you can try to plan ahead: on Reddit one of the tactics used by those with hateful agendas was to shut down progressive threads by purposely creating drama in that thread to overwhelm the moderators so that they had to lock the thread thus stopping all discussion. Sometimes they did this by being awful and dragging in well meaning users into fights, other times I they’d drop a few “I’m just asking questions” comments focussing on hot-button ideas that they knew would rile up arguments. It was very deliberate tactic and one that I don’t think moderators ever figured out how to deal with effectively, because short of babysitting the thread with their full attention from start to finish there was no way to prevent entire threads from devolving into attacks and arguments.

The crazy thing was how effectively one or two people with hateful agendas could derail an entire comment section of well meaning people and, by getting the thread locked, shut down the discussion and spread of progressive ideas.

I bring this up because Beehaw is perhaps uniquely vulnerable to this sort of ‘attack’, and you should expect to see it in the future. By joining other federated instances and using these tactics to stir up drama in Beehaw threads they can, by forcing your hand to defederalize, restrict the access of those other communities to the progressive ideals and ideas posted on Beehaw. The end result is isolating progressive ideas inside our walled garden, while users of the rest of the Lemmy instances start to only see more right-wing extremist views, normalizing them to otherwise everyday people.

I don’t have a solution to this. But it’s something to be aware of in discussions with the moderators of other instances, that a handful of people with this exact agenda can make their community look bad in order to restrict their users’ access to progressive ideas.

The incident is in fact being investigated by the RCMP. On top of that it was other parents who intervened to stop the man, the school is banning them from school property, a city council member says they’ll investigate how to promote safer spaces for those who are minorities, the mayor gave a statement condemning it, and the premier of the province condemned it and encouraged everyone to stand up against transphobia. The message has consistently been that transphobia is not okay, and not “but she wasn’t even trans!”, which I think is good.

Realistically the response after it happened was probably about as good as could ever be hoped for. I really hope the little girl is able to remember the support and not the attempted insult.

I also feel bad for the grandchild of the bigots, who was also participating in the event and is presumably a classmate of the other kids. The grandparents apparently live two provinces away, so good job Grandma and Grandpa coming for a visit and causing shit for the kid and parents who have to live in that community.

AskHistorians is taking the approach of “blackout for two days, then read-only moving forward indefinitely.” I think that’s a good approach as it still removes the functionality of the subreddit while reminding people of what they’re missing out on due to the admins’ actions.

I know there are bigger subs, but AskHistorians is an absolute jewel in Reddit’s crown. For all the dumpster fire subs that raise controversy and drag Reddit’s image down, AskHistorians is the one sub that could always be pointed to as a sub with an inarguably positive impact. It’s also a sub in a unique position because its moderators are probably the hardest for Reddit to replace, because many of them are the historians that answer the questions, or have personal relationships with those that do. In addition most of the historians aren’t really Redditors, participating only on AskHistorians. Removing the current mod team and replacing them would absolutely 100% kill the sub forever.

Not that I have any faith in Reddit to do the right thing. I just think it’s interesting to realize just how different of a position AskHistorians in than the rest of the subreddits, being at the same time more impactful than their subscriber numbers show, while being fragile enough to be permanently broken if handled poorly. They are also one of the only mod teams I’ve see who have issued a list of actionable goals that Reddit can address.

Also it’s interesting to see that their participation in the blackout is almost entirely on Spez’s head. That’s some damn fine CEOing there, Lou.

Have you ever tried simply turning off the TV, sitting down with your husband, and hitting him?

If you’re interested in 4X games at all Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri is only $1.49. It absolutely holds up and to this day probably still has the best story of any 4X game.

It also works great on Steamdeck with a couple of easy tweaks. Unfortunately the instructions for those tweaks are currently in Reddit blackout shutdown limbo so I can’t copy them here, but when the blackout ends you can Find The Instructions Here.

I like Nier Automata a lot, but I still think the advice you got was pretty crappy. If you don’t find the world interesting and don’t like the combat then beating the game multiple times is not going to change your mind. That’s like encouraging someone to read a book series they don’t like because you think the ending of book 5 is great.

They’re still going on about efficiency, meanwhile Apollo only used 0.4% of the requested daily limit Reddit required of 3rd party apps.

They set the limit, and are now acting like their hands were forced by an app hitting 1/250th of that limit.

I liked how the choice of what faction to join was a legitimately tough choice. Too many games are like “Do you want to join the Puppy Huggers or the Puppy Punchers?”. In Elex they’re all much more grey than black and white.

I was in the exact same boat you are now before I played. I almost never play platformers, and so even though I owned Hollow Knight, I always left it for some imaginary day when I felt up to it.

By complete coincidence though I also owned Steamworld Dig 2, due to loving Steamworld Heist by the same developer and wanting to see more of the world they’d created. Not feeling as intimidated by Steamworld Dig 2 because it didn’t have the same difficult reputation as Hollow Knight, I gave it a try.

It couldn’t have worked out better. Not only is it an amazing game in its own right, but the difficulty curve was absolutely perfect to prepare me for Hollow Knight. After finishing Steamworld 2 I was still craving more gameplay of that type, and was able to jump right into Hollow Knight and the difficulty just felt natural and achievable, since it was relatively close to the difficulty Steamworld 2 had ended on. The games are similar enough that my skills carried over, and I honestly think it helped me get the most out of Hollow Knight as a player who never played similar games prior.

That was my experience, and I’m always glad it worked out that way because now I love Hollow Knight and it’s one of my favourite games. So for anyone who has any doubts about their ability to play Hollow Knight due to their inexperience with the genre, playing Steamworld Dig 2 first may set you up perfectly to tackle Hollow Knight. It did for me, and I had a blast with both games.

Elex had some really rough reviews, and didn’t exactly have me chomping at the bit to try it. A while back I noticed it was included in my PS+ subscription, so I gave it a shot out of curiosity.

It’s actually pretty great. The beginning of the game is really hard (tip - get a companion ASAP, as they are substantially better than you at first), which is kind of refreshing to be honest to have a game where you’re told ‘you have lost your power and are weak’ and you actually are. But as you level up and get used to the systems, you gradually become an absolute monster on the battlefield. There’s nothing more satisfying in a game than returning to a monster that once killed you if it even looked at you, and being able to beat the crap out of it now.

I also felt it did “post apocalyptic world’ very well. Where most games of the type take the approach of making a world that looks like the world was destroyed a month before you set off on your adventure, Elex takes a different approach of showing a mixed world of areas that are well on their way to recovery, and areas where the land itself is so damaged it’s unlikely to ever recover, and a few places in between. It works, at least it did for me.

The game is not perfect by any means, there is a level of jank that can be both charming and annoying, but it’s a very solid adventure that at least dares to try to be different than the top games in its genre. Definitely worth a try for fans of RPGs, open world games, or adventure games.

There are a few videos on YouTube of people showing heavily modded Daggerfall, and it looks pretty great. It does seem to have been embraced by a dedication community of modders who provide full instructions of how to get it all set up how they have it.

Here’s one sample video of what people have accomplished.