Well the whole point was that they're not mainstream. Some of them had budgets, but you forget about them because they sucked and never went anywhere. I forget about them too. The most successful I can think of is Captain Planet.

That's not it, he already had a deal for everything he wanted. The problem is that after the tariffs China is no longer willing to play ball. So now he's trying to keep what he almost had.

The pandering that you're talking about is all changes. The original can't have changes to itself. But if you compare the 1989 version to the Hans Christian Andersen version, then the 1989 version has tons of pandering. So much.

It's just pandering of a different kind, targeted at a different audience. This is often the problem with complaints of this nature. You're not complaining about pandering, you're complaining about pandering targeted at someone who isn't yourself and who you don't empathize with.

Likewise: people complaining about "identity politics." Every single politician makes appeals to groups like that. They talk about how they're going to help the coal miners, or the auto workers, or the homeschoolers, or the farmers, or the religious scammers, etc. And if you empathize with the auto workers then that seems good, and you rationalize how this is a responsible use of public funds. And if you don't empathize with the auto workers then you ask why the fuck that politician is giving your tax money to your asshole neighbor Gary, just because Gary works at Ford. Fuck Gary.

And finally: your comment about Doctor Who is an example of survivorship bias. Doctor Who is an old series because it's historically been good and so has been renewed many times. There are plenty of old series which did their preaching in unsubtle ways, and they sucked. And so they no longer exist and have largely been forgotten. Bad writing isn't new, and preachyness isn't new. But the subject matter is new. The topics that they're preaching about are new.

It was never not offensive, it was just done anyway. Eventually there was enough incompetence and fatal accidents to end that policy, but we seem to be rolling back a lot of blood-earned regulations.

Trading card games are still games, the headline is just trying to make a joke. As for: "who thought this was a good idea?" Seemingly every independent video game store is moving in this direction. And the video game publishers are as well, in their way.

First, recognize that trading card games are gacha games. Second, recognize that microtransactions are taking over the video game industry. And that gacha games are a big part of that. Third, recognize that physical gacha games, like TCGs, are the only way that brick-and-mortar stores can participate in this transition.

In that light, I think this makes sense. All of this is horrible of course, but I'd rather have Gamestop selling cards than Funkopops. At least the cards are games.

I'm... stunned. All this time you've been ranting and you haven't got a single clue about what any of this is. You're angry at hallucinations. No wonder this conversation has been so difficult.

USAid was given a $500k fund earmarked for the purpose of combating discrimination overseas. NGOs could apply for grants to get some of that money, and a portion of that money went to this particular organization who later made a slide which a few congressmen complained about. The only thing that USAid did was give out grants. That's it.

I... holy shit man. How could you possibly get so worked up over something that you understood so poorly? You're endlessly self-righteous about nothing. I'm not going to go any further with this, this is too much for me. If you want to keep going then maybe start from the beginning and read through my replies again, perhaps they'll look different now that you know what I was talking about.

And not just the consoles. I was expecting the games to be easy to find, but I was in a Walmart the other day and they were completely sold out of every Switch 2 game. I don't know if that's true everywhere, but that really took me by surprise.

3050 was 8nm, the Switch 2 chip is shrunk to 5nm. That will give some increased efficiency.

The 3050 comparisons are because the Switch 2 SoC is using the same microarchitecture.

As for the money: I doubt it. It's a really well-crafted device once you get your hands on it, and remember that Nintendo didn't raise the price of the base console in response to the tariffs. They usually make a small profit on the consoles, but it wouldn't surprise me if they're taking a small loss this time for that reason.

So the AC is right, you really don't know how any of this works if you think that an NGO has diplomatic immunity. But, the important thing is that we've established that you don't think it's the allocation of public funds which matters. You think it's totally fine for an atheist organization to receive tax dollars as long as they pull some accounting magic in the way that you described. When you were talking about "sponsoring atheism" you meant in a manner other than monetarily. That's progress.

So all right, let's get to those other points. Well one point, it's really just #3. And it doesn't seem to be real. Neither the NY Post article that you linked, nor the Newsweek article that I linked mentioned anything like what you've described. It seems that you ignored my summary of events above, let's get back to that:

How do your claims about insubordination fit in here? When did that happen in the timeline, and who exercised what authority to try and force USAid to act in the way that you described? Don't say "the state department," give me something more specific.

Great, so we're back to where we were like ten comments ago: You're saying that everything would be fine as long as the non-profit organization claimed that this one slide was self-funded.

You have again evaded the issue and regressed into an inane bit of pedantry. I specified one slide because it doesn't matter. And because I guess I'm amused by your attempts at deflection.

And the rest of what you said there is just noise. Once again: Tell me why you think that a church can allocate funds in such a complete way that they can maintain an entirely secular school while not even ten dollars gets spent on anything religious. Not the building, not the grounds, not the staff, not the parking lot. Tell me why you think a church can not only do that but that they all have done that, reliably, across the whole country. While you think an atheist organization can not.

"Marketing" implies there's some kind of market. People do sometimes overreact, but there's very little financial motivation to exaggerate the danger. Certainly nothing compared to the motivation to downplay it.

Let's try this: ignore everything else that I wrote here, and just focus on this one thing. How much does a powerpoint slide cost? Ten dollars? Like a banana? Tell me why you think that a church can allocate funds in such a complete way that they can maintain an entirely secular school while not even ten dollars gets spent on anything religious. Not the building, not the grounds, not the staff, not the parking lot. Tell me why you think a church can not only do that but that they all have done that, reliably, across the whole country. While you think an atheist organization can not. That is the paper thin line that you think is some solid barrier, which for some reason does not apply to the atheist organization.

Wait. This is the thing that matters, instead of all that other stuff you were talking about? Newt Gingrich rants about giving a small amount of money to an atheist organization in 2022, some congressmen cry themselves to sleep when they realize that atheists exist and spend the next two years trying to dig up dirt on that organization, and eventually they find a slide of questionable neutrality and finally have an excuse to throw a tantrum.

During that period they try to bully USAid into dropping the atheist organization. Naturally, a few congressmen do not have the authority to give real orders like that and so USAid rolls their eyes, gives a boilerplate response, and goes about their business.

Now here you are, today, acting like the tiny amount of money given to this organization is a catastrophe, all while twisting yourself into knots trying to justify giving many thousands of times that amount to churches.

You spent a whole paragraph there on arguing that people with religious affiliation can participate in a secular education, as though that was ever in question. So let's try this: ignore everything else that I wrote here, and just focus on this one thing. How much does a powerpoint slide cost? Ten dollars? Like a banana? Tell me why you think that a church can allocate funds in such a complete way that they can maintain an entirely secular school while not even ten dollars gets spent on anything religious. Not the building, not the grounds, not the staff, not the parking lot. Tell me why you think a church can not only do that but that they all have done that, reliably, across the whole country. While you think an atheist organization can not.

That is the paper thin line that you think is some solid barrier, which for some reason does not apply to the atheist organization.