Grumpy
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So thats what Democrats were called back in the day?
Politics is Downstream From Culture
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Hogwarts Legacy Review
By setting the game in the 1800s, the developer is able to borrow story elements and locations from later in the timeline, but otherwise tell a new story free of canon constraints. Adopting the role of a witch or wizard of your creation, players arrive at Hogwarts as a new student joining the fifth-year class. Circumstances rapidly develop that challenge you to balance your matriculation with a grand extra-curricular adventure involving dark wizards, dangerous goblins, and an ancient form of lost magic. The storytelling sometimes serves as an excuse to hit big beats players expect, like a triumphant ride on a hippogriff or an amusing excursion through the castle while shapeshifted into a humorous character. If the overarching narrative sometimes feels a little flimsy as a result, it’s buoyed by uniformly excellent dialogue and voice acting that carries the action forward, as well as a standout musical score.
From the armor suits that come to attention as you pass to books that fly around like birds waiting to be snatched from the air, Hogwarts is a delightful environment to explore. It’s not hard to understand why characters in the books were always getting into trouble outside class; it’s nearly impossible not to get distracted from your path to education by a side quest, collectible chase, or other activity. Secret doors and discoveries are everywhere, as are plentiful relationships with the young students and eccentric faculty. That dynamic extends beyond the labyrinthine corridors of the castle to the large open world beyond its grounds. The outdoor environs are filled with beasts to tame, dungeons to tackle, and chances to hop on your broom to zip across the countryside.
'Hogwarts Legacy' review: A massive game, alive with magic
Hogwarts Legacy is alive with magic. It’s a massive and gorgeous open-world RPG that extends far beyond the walls of the wizarding school, with mysteries, danger and cute creatures packed into every corner. Casting spells quickly becomes second nature in this environment and when it comes to puzzles, my magical instincts are often correct and richly rewarded. Combat involves intricate spellwork and lightning-quick responses, and this combination consistently results in a seamless, satisfying flow. I feel powerful while playing Hogwarts Legacy. I feel like a witch — and that’s all I’ve ever really wanted.
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The main storylines in Hogwarts Legacy are generic fantasy platforms. Two main arcs collide: one pits players against goblin revolutionaries planning to destroy wizardkind, and the other is an extensive investigation of an ancient and powerful magic — the same magic that you, the main character, can uniquely wield. The latter arc will be painfully familiar to Harry Potter fans, as it involves a bunch of old farts repeatedly throwing a child into deadly situations while withholding crucial information and stroking their long white beards. I guess we know where Dumbledore got it from.
Personally, I don’t love the focus on the Goblin Rebellions. It’s functional as a basic fantasy premise, but it’s an obvious choice for a Harry Potter prequel and the game hasn’t yet demonstrated that it was a particularly thoughtful decision. The conceit so far is, “goblins are bad, wizardkind is good,” and there hasn’t been an intricate discussion about class, power and revolution within this framework, though these opportunities are prevalent. Regardless of how this storyline concludes, I would’ve appreciated a more nuanced approach or an original enemy.
There are valid questions about whether the depiction of goblins in Harry Potter is inherently antisemitic, or the result of centuries of European fiction that coded vampires, dwarves and other creatures with its authors’ antisemitism. What you need to know is that goblins in Hogwarts Legacy are not meaningfully different to those in the novels, so your stance on the issue is unlikely to shift with this presentation.
Review: 'Hogwarts Legacy' is open world magic, but can't escape Rowling controversy
Unfortunately, this trip to Hogwarts comes with some heavy baggage. While Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling was not directly involved in the game's production (though her creative agency was), the controversy over comments she made that have been read by many as transphobic has led to ongoing calls for a boycott. Hogwarts Legacy does feature the franchise's first trans character, but trans advocates and allies criticized her inclusion as a token attempt to head off backlash.
The controversy has fueled deeply-divided reactions to the game, even as it broke pre-sale and Twitch viewership records. For this review, we'll focus on the merits of the game itself, but Rowling's stance and her financial ties to the Wizarding World (she'll stand to benefit from sales) remain.
Review: There Is No Magic in Hogwarts Legacy
The game is mid at best, and its real-world harms are impossible to ignore.The story is rooted in anti-Semitic tropes. The gameplay feels dated. The graphics feel like they’re a couple generations behind. All the characters are one-dimensional. It doesn’t stay true to the established lore. Every character feels like an off-brand version of the characters we know and love. There’s no sense of place. No magic, no heart.
Nothing with a Wizarding World stamp on it can be viewed outside the context of it being a product of Dame J. K. Rowling, CH, OBE.
Within the pages of her books, she made the ordinary seem extraordinary. She created a place where weird lonely kids would be told they were special, where kids who had survived abuse were more than just fundamentally broken. Since 2019 though, the once-beloved children’s author has—well, she’s had some opinions. About people like me. And whether or not we should exist. She’s even gone as far as to suggest that we’re inherently dangerous, a threat to real (ouch) women everywhere.
When I was a kid, every word that flowed from J. K. Rowling’s pen wrote magic into my world, but now every word she puts out just hurts my heart. Every homophobic or transphobic thing queer kids hear growing up becomes a voice that follows them for a long time. We hear relatives, friends, and parents say awful things about us and to us. For a lot of us, we fight those voices every day. When one of those voices comes from the author who taught you about accepting yourself, a person you thought truly saw you and kids like you, it hurts in a way I honestly hope she never understands. I wouldn’t wish it on anyone.
I don’t hate her. It would honestly be easier if I did. Inside me somewhere, there’s a kid who still loves her despite everything. That kid has a lot of experience loving people who hurt her. She never asks why; she just wants to know what she did wrong and how she can fix it. It’s hard to tell her there’s nothing left to fix. And that there are places we can’t return to. Places like Hogwarts.
Massive Gaming Company Partners With Police to Jail Users Who ‘Commit Hate Speech’ While Gaming
If you are a gamer and dare to utter a word from the Left’s long list of “banned” words, you could soon be getting a visit from police.
Gaming behemoth Ubisoft has teamed up with law enforcement and the ADL to put gamers who engage in “hate speech” while playing their games in jail.
The mainstream media, of course, are hailing the news as a historic victory.
Per the BBC:
Infowars.com reports: If you are a parent, Ubisoft games are now a threat to your children’s future.
If your kid tells someone he wants to “kill them” in game they could report them to the police and hand all their private info over to authorities, even if they’re in another country.
The solution to in-game “toxicity” for all time has been the mute button and/or growing a thick skin. The notion that Ubisoft would call the police on their users is an absolute disgrace.
The ADL’s program for Ubisoft and other gaming companies revolves around spying on gamers, encouraging companies to ban users for espousing “hate speech” and “white supremacy,” expanding in-game reporting systems to ban users for their speech and lobbying governments to change their laws to jail gamers for their online speech.
^Glad I never got into online gaming, save a short while at Evony over a decade ago.
Don't 'Jump the Gun': New Speech Guide Orders You to Ax Your 'Violent Language'
Ayana explained to the Daily Mail, “[Evolving From Violent Language] is for those who would like to replace mostly violently framed idioms with more positive and inclusive language.”
The instruction offers two columns — one with common words and phrases and the other with their proper replacements. And — forgive the biological violence — the list has gone viral.
One iteration shared by Silicon Valley executive Jeremiah Owyang has garnered more than 31 million views. Jeremiah laments that he’s “used the (violent) phrases…too often.”
How often is just the right amount? Judge for yourself; here are a few of the offenses:
The fixes:
They don’t quite have the same zing.
Techno-Hell: The Rise of the 'COVID-19 Influencer'
The now-entrenched “Zero COVID” subculture isn’t going anywhere anytime soon. And they need social media diversion as much as any techno-slave out there.
Hence the “COVID-19 influencer,” whose online activity pertains almost exclusively to COVID-19 fear porn and whom the government has utilized to induce compliance for its various injection and lockdown programs within the population. Via Spectrum News:
True believers, though, disseminate the biomedical state’s COVID propaganda for free — while hilariously deluding themselves into believing they are on the side of the downtrodden. Here, an attractive young COVIDian with an anarchy symbol as her name models a brand-new N95 mask for her followers.
The pro-lockdown, pro-vax-mandate Branch COVIDian fascists insist on unironically branding themselves “antifascists” and “anarchists;” methinks they don’t know what those labels mean. Alas, most of them went to public school, so it’s not surprising that they don’t understand basic political terminology.
Another COVID influencer tactic is to fearmonger about so-called “Long COVID” to maximize the coronavirus terror. This is done to diminishing returns, but not for lack of trying.
How Bad Is the Harry Potter “Hogwarts Legacy” Video Game Backlash? There’s a Guide To Hiding Your Gameplay
This past Friday saw the release of the new video game “Hogwarts Legacy”, following in the wake of significant outrage and social media idiocy for months on end. The disturbance in the spells was not due to Voldemort, but to the overly self-important souls who feel it is their duty in life to oppose author JK Rowling in all of her endeavors.
As a result, many in the gaming community have taken it upon themselves to express outrage and actively seek to oppose people — who are playing a video game they disapprove of. It has become the biggest controversy in the gaming community since #GamerGate, only this is even dumber; because THEY do not approve of this game it means YOU cannot play it. If it sounds rather daft rest assured, you have it wrong; it is far more ridiculous than that.
Take this example: People are supposedly willing to quit their jobs, because others at work were talking about the game.
Mind you, this was their reaction well before the release of the game itself. And as we have come to know, this all stems from the imbalanced reactions to JK Rowlings and her stance in support of women and not coddling the trans community’s demands that men be recognized as women. But better, the accusations that Rowling is “anti-trans” are completely baseless.
As one writer at Huffington Post discovered, when she set out to bring down Rowling for her “history” of anti-trans positions, it turns out that she could not find any evidence to back up the claim. E.J. Rosetta spent three months going through Rowling’s writings and posts and could not find a single transphobic message.
This of course has not stopped the howling from online activists. But the howling has not stopped the fans from supporting the game. As has been proven numerous times, online outrage mobs are not the economic force they pretend to be, and with “Hogwarts Legacy” it has been shown to be no different. Although released only on Friday the game was already a smash. It set records for advanced sales in the gaming industry.
Liberal Chelsea Handler Brags About Being 'Childless,' Attacking the Nuclear Family
"I wake up at 6 am. I remember that I have no kids to take to school, so I take an edible, masturbate, and go back to sleep," Handler begins in the opening monologue.
Then Handler continued with a more over-the-top attitude, saying that around 12:30 in the afternoon, she gets "ready for a busy day of doing whatever the f--- I feel like."
"I put on my most impractical and stylish shoes since I won't be chasing a child around the grocery store," Handler said, adding that she heads to her "fave spot in Paris to grab a croissant," pointing out that the plane ride is quiet enough to meditate on because "I have no screaming kids."
In today's hookup culture and the idea that "women don't need a man," Handler bragged about being able to engage sexually with "whatever hot guy" she met that night.
What a bunch of snowflakes! Almost half of recent college graduates are not 'emotionally' prepared for a 9-5, damning survey finds
- A bombshell survey has revealed that huge numbers of young professionals are emotionally unprepared to survive the modern workday
- A majority of workers aged 22-28 feel burnt out every week, and 51 percent have sought help for their mental health in the last year
- Large numbers of those surveyed slated colleges for failing to prepare them for their careers
Almost half of recent college graduates are not 'emotionally' prepared to survive in the workplace, while a majority of those in their 20s feel 'burnt out' at least once a week.
These were the bombshell findings from a new survey of America's young professionals, which concluded that the next generation of workers aren't equipped to handle a regular 9-5.
The survey, conducted by the Mary Christie Institute, unearthed numerous shocking statistics, including that 51 percent of young workers needed help for mental health issues within the past year.
Young professionals also offered a damning verdict on the role of colleges in preparing them for their careers, slating their university experience for failing to prime them to enter office life.
The think tank said their data demonstrates that 'once in the workplace, young people continue to struggle mentally and emotionally'.
Vox in despair: Hogwarts Legacy is a hit and there's nothing the left can do
Unfortunately for the critics, they may be experiencing a bit of the Streisand effect, i.e. by drawing so much attention to the game they are acting as free marketing.
And that brings us to Vox which published a story today titled “Can more Harry Potter ever be okay?” The answer, according to author Aja Romano is no.
Roald Dahl Goes Woke: Famous Children’s Author’s Books Heavily Altered by ‘Sensitivity Readers’
Puffin and the Roald Dahl Story Company worked with Inclusive Minds, which is dedicated to “inclusion and accessibility in children’s literature,” its spokesperson told the Daily Mail, to dilute the creator’s playful narratives to be more acceptable to what they consider contemporary culture.
References to characters’ physical appearances have been sanitized, with the words “fat” and “ugly” now missing from every new edition of the books, the Daily Telegraph reported.
In the original James and the Giant Peach, a character rhymes, “Aunt Sponge was terrifically fat / And tremendously flabby at that,” and, “Aunt Spiker was thin as a wire / And dry as a bone, only drier.”
With the new changes, the old verses now read: “Aunt Sponge was a nasty old brute / And deserved to be squashed by the fruit,” and, “Aunt Spiker was much of the same / And deserves half of the blame.”
The famous glutton Augustus Gloop in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is no longer introduced as “fat” but rather as “enormous.” In The Twits, Mrs Twit used to be described as “ugly and beastly” but is now only “beastly.”
Gendered references have also been weakened so as not to be deemed offensive to women or the transgender community. In The Witches, a section musing that witches are bald beneath their wigs has the new disclaimer: “There are plenty of other reasons why women might wear wigs and there is certainly nothing wrong with that.”
Matilda‘s Miss Trunchbull, the ferocious fictional headmistress of a school, formerly a “most formidable female” is now a “most formidable woman.”