Many noted a striking similarity to the case of Savita Halappavanar, a 31-year-old woman who died of septic shock in 2012 after providers in Ireland refused to empty her uterus while she was miscarrying at 17 weeks. When she begged for care, a midwife told her, “This is a Catholic country.” The resulting investigation and public outcry galvanized the country to change its strict ban on abortion.

But in the wake of deaths related to abortion access in the United States, leaders who support restricting the right have not called for any reforms.

My country’s aptitude for remaining entirely unmoved by preventable tragedies that utterly upend political trajectories in other nations has become one of our most globally defining traits.

Video clip of the comment and aftermath during discussion (via twitter): https://x.com/Acyn/status/1851085909435039789

“Are you a supporter of Hamas?”

“Are you a racist, violent person inciting violence against me?”

So close to great. I wish more developers were making environmentally detailed, high production value, single player linear games like Callisto Protocol. Just that little bit better executed to round out the total package.

Fatal Frame has gotten lost to history a bit, but I remember those games having the reputation as being the scariest that games have ever gotten when they were new.

The turn-based with real-time elements reminds me of Sea of Stars and Shadow Hearts, which are both excellent titles in my mind for this game to associate itself with. Looks really flashy too with the menu, camera movement, and slowdown effects (hopefully that wouldn’t get old with too much repetition).

Same here. Loved the setting and style, and the story and characters were admirably close to (the good) 3rd-person bioware stuff.

I don’t usually pay full price for games, but I was thinking of buying Greedfall 2 near release to support what they do. This puts a real taint on things.

It’s worth mentioning that article is from 2020, around the time she had started pivoting from TERF-lite to TERF-MAX. It was…reasonably possible to assume at the time, for someone who wasn’t paying close attention, that her opinions were still rooted in misguided concern rather than open bigotry.

She had only just posted her manifesto a few months earlier, according to Vox’s helpful timeline, which reads reasonably if you’re unaware of the multitude of false and misleading claims she parrots.

Same, though interested is an understatement. Prey is one of the greatest games I’ve ever played. I enjoyed Weird West, but it left me feeling more like a POC of what the studio wants to do than anything up to the actual standards of Arkane’s best.

If WolfEye fills the void of Arkane’s deplorable closure, they’ll get all the support I can give.

Deadline is a film industry trade paper, so success metrics like Box Office are of interest to it, especially insofar as those metrics guide the trajectory of industry trends.

Tried The Ascent because of just how slick it looked in the previews I saw. And you’re right, the atmosphere is great. But I have a low tolerance for the looter shooter format and I don’t play much online coop, so I got real bored of it real fast.

I view the first in a vacuum because the others actually harm it

Lol I do the same thing! If I watch any of the sequels I view them essentially as fanfic. Your point about emotional payoff in the first is really good too. It’s easy to forget watching the sequels that the dramatic core of the first movie was John’s grief for his wife. The dramatic core of the sequels is little more, as I remember, than the convoluted bureaucracy and politics of John trying and failing to be left alone.

The best moment in the entire franchise is after the assassination squad is sent to his house in the first movie. I saw it in theaters and fully, unconsciously anticipated that when the police strobe lights started flashing through the windows, that we would get a tense scene of John Wick attempting to distract the cop and send him away without the bodies being discovered.

When instead he opens the door wide, and the cop casually peers past his shoulder, and just asks, “you working again?”, it’s such a delightful, comical, surprising reveal. The concept worked best when we as the audience expected the world to function familiarly, and it could playfully subvert those expectations in small ways. They dove so deep into the capital-L lore beginning in the second movie, that we no longer expected the world to function familiarly, and thereafter stopped being surprised.

The first flick is a bonified good movie. The rest are, varyingly, titillating scenes of artfully choreographed and executed action set pieces loosely strung together by indulgently juvenile nonsense.

forecasts ad revenue to hit $1 trillion

I didn’t go to the theater for a few years due to both the pandemic and a new baby. When I did return for the first time last year, I was truly shocked at how many ads there are now at the major chains before curtain draw. It used to be ads before showtime, then trailers when the lights dimmed at showtime. Now it seems like there are just as many trailers as there were before, but intercut by an equal number of ads, so the time between showtime and actual movie start is ridiculous.

Best theater experience I’ve had by far was seeing The Descent on release. In that crucial mid-movie moment, the whole theater freaked out, and after things settled down I saw someone climbing back over the seat they’d apparently jumped over when it happened.

I’ve been enjoying Pacific Drive this week. It’s a great survival crafting game in the vein of Subnautica, which is to say there is a linear progression path for upgrades and improvement, and a well-defined objective and end goal.

I just wish it was less stressful. Even just the normal act of activating a gateway to end a run requires a race through your current zone where one misstep can cause you to get stuck long enough to fail. And sometimes conditions just really stack up against you in a way that can be unexpected and frustrating.

Overall though it really hits the spot with its loop. I love returning to the garage and going through the ritual of healing, fueling up, recharging, transferring supplies, and checking on upgrades.

Oh…I also finished and platinumed 13 sentinels earlier this week. I enjoyed that one a lot more than I expected. It’s as compelling as it is eye-rollingly funny how many sci-fi tropes the main story burns through, but I i was frequently and pleasantly taken by surprise. And the battle system, which through the first area I thought was so easy it was basically a formality, really did become more challenging and tactical, especially when trying to get S ranks.

Eh…seems sweet but contrived.

In searching for the video, (already provided in this thread) I amazingly found that this appears to be the same school where a selection of boys from the class of 2018 posed for a gleeful photo of them throwing up the nazi salute.

I kind of love Control’s navigation. The map is helpful enough to point you in the right direction, but also shitty enough that you have to pay attention to the diagetic signage. It’s uniquely immersive.

13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim. I am about 25% through with both Remembrance and the battles… Destruction? I’m in awe of the narrative’s complexity. It’s also a little overwhelming, it feels impossible to get any kind of handle on things. The game adds new layers every time you think you’re getting it.

Im really enjoying it though, the mystery is really fun to dig at.

I also beat Malenia this week, which is pretty much the last major thing I had left in my first Elden Ring save. I got help of course (thanks superelva11), but it’s been really satisfying tying a bow on that. 140 hours, plus another 30-35 on a second save - Elden Ring is officially the most time I’ve ever spent on a single game by quite a large margin.

Good luck my friend. Hollow Knight is a special one, but those bosses can be punishing. A few of them took me separate sessions over a few days, which is a frustrating way to play games for me, but it’s such a rewarding experience otherwise. I recently rewatched my recording of beating one of the bosses and I was fumbling so bad, I could see my own desperation in the way I was playing.

Apparently there’s a secret phase for the final boss that I was more than happy to experience via YouTube. I was perfectly satisfied with just rolling the credits.