AssortedBiscuits

I knew that thread would be a complete shitshow lmao

"B-b-b-but he can't control himself saying the n-word. Quit being ableist!"

1. Immediate L for attending a pretentious circlejerk called an awards ceremony instead of refusing to go like a normal person.

2. Imagine being cramped into an enclosed space with not a single person wearing a goddamn mask. So much for caring about disabled people. I guess it's only people with particular disabilities that are worth considering like people compulsively saying the n-word in front of Black people.

3. If his compulsion was so bad that he cannot guarantee not saying slurs in front of marginalized people, then he should have the awareness to excuse himself whenever a person from a marginalized community is on stage. Nobody's stopping him from timing his bathroom breaks whenever a racial minority or a visibly queer person or someone wearing a hijab is on stage.

I feel so bad for Lindo and Jordan. What should've been a highlight of their acting careers gets completely overshadowed by this racist bullshit.

Imagine if the dude had said "free Palestine" instead. Not a single shred of evidence of his existence would appear in the broadcast and he would've been barred from attending any future events for life.

It's a coincidence that Maxwell is still alive while Epstein's neck just did that. Pay no attention to who her father was or the guests in her father's funeral.

The notion that an intelligence agency could fake the death of an asset is not one of them

Assets are supposed to be disposable though. The hierarchy is case officers > handlers > assets. I think Maxwell is the handler, owning to her closer ties to intelligence through her father, while Epstein is simply an asset. The other convincing argument for this relationship is the fact that the handler is still alive while the asset has been liquidated. Epstein, like all assets who have outlived their usefulness, becomes the fall guy.

You can see this pattern in other cases. For the Oklahoma City bombing, McVeigh and his accomplice driver were disposable assets while John Doe 2 their handler has connections with West German intelligence. And after the bombing happened, McVeigh and the driver were left to rot while the feds tried to erase all existence of John Doe 2 like confiscating security camera footage in surrounding buildings that would've definitively proven the existence of John Doe 2. McVeigh got executed with lethal injection while John Doe 2 got flown out of the US by a pilot working for the CIA. There are levels to this.

I'm still in the "intelligence agencies will unceremoniously liquidate assets who have outlived their usefulness and have become a liability" camp, so if they did whisk him out of jail, it's to liquidate him at a black site where no one knows where he is. Why would they want to kill him and bury his body in an unmarked grave? It's to liquidate him in a gruesome torturous fashion, presumably to serve as an example for assets who have become liabilities.

Because Israel wants its operatives to know they've got their back no matter what despicable shit they're doing for Israel. They want them to know they will not be abandoned by Israel, even when imprisoned. It keeps them from turning to save their own skin.

They don't need Epstein to be alive. They just need to think Epstein is still alive. Mossad isn't going to bring Epstein out to shake hands with prospective agents to show that he's still alive. It's going to be through rumors like "I've heard that Epstein is still having coke parties at Tel Aviv." Those rumors don't require Epstein to be physically alive though.

Perhaps this is the real conspiracy: they liquidate Epstein at his cell so he wouldn't squeal and they fake enough discrepancies (autopsies with anatomical inconsistencies, edited postmortem photos to make it look like it's not him) to push a "Epstein is still alive" narrative that both gives Mossad agents cope that they aren't disposable tools and discredits the idea that intelligence agencies were behind his death ("saying the CIA killed Epstein is a conspiracy theory like how Epstein is still alive.").

Look at that dipshit Sneeze hiding behind the wheel like the yellow-belly class traitor that he is.

Wasn't there a rageface of this pose?

This is the time for him to write his will/living trust and take serious steps towards planning his funeral and final resting place. Not an "I want to be buried in a hole in the ground," but actually picking the mortuary, buying the graveyard plot, and selecting the gravestone design that will be used should he pass away.

If he is the sole living partner, he also needs to begin handing out things not covered by his will/living trust to remaining family and friends. "Here son, take my fishing rod. It's yours now." For the sake of his soon-to-be-grieving-should-the-cancer-proves-to-be-terminal family and friends, he also needs to get rid of his useless junk. He needs to get rid of that stool that he kept around for no reason instead of having family and friends argue over whether they should get rid of the stool because since he hasn't gotten rid of the stool, this stool obviously has great sentimental value to him.

He shouldn't wait until he has terminal cancer before going, "Welp, I'm gonna die. Time to settle my affairs." He's going to die anyways just like how we're all going to die as well. If the cancer becomes that advance, he's going to be very weak and in constant pain, perhaps not even mentally competent enough to make important decisions. And even if he does beat cancer, he's going to be frailer than he is right now on top of being weaker due to being older.

However, everything I've read about him from you paints him as a typical boomer dude. I do not think he will take my advice to heart. Most likely, he will deny that he is very close to the edge between life and death and has to be dragged kicking and screaming to seriously reckon with his mortality and take appropriate actions.

Ultimately, the question "is X art?" just perpetuates commodity fetishism since the art in question only exists because of human labor. And as we know, commodities don't need to be physical objects. A service or a performance could itself be a commodity.

The real question should be "is Y an artist in the context of X?" For a piano recital, the vast majority of people would say that both the composer who wrote the piece and the pianist who is actually playing the piece are artists in their own right. Some people might include the audience listening to the piece (the audience's role in piano recitals is obscured due to bourgeois cultural norms of reducing the audience to passive listener, but it's far more obvious in music with call-and-response). I personally would include the workers that make the instruments and perhaps even the musical "peripherals" like the piano bench as artists since the piano recital wouldn't exist without them actually making it possible through their labor.

Perhaps you might think it's a reach to consider a janitor who keeps the recital hall clean an artist, but if we consider a film production, I would absolutely consider stunt people and workers who labor towards constructing sets and the catering crew as much of artists as the director and writers and "the talent." It's honestly elitism to suggest otherwise. Stunt people put their bodies on the line to make an entire genre of film watchable, but some bigshot celebrity who phones it in for a fat paycheck is more of an artist than them?

As for " "is Y an artist in the context of X?" implies that you've already decided X is art," I subscribe to a fuzzy definition of art that most people use in practice (non-utilitarian product, not bad craftsmanship ie talent, made by humans, societal consensus, needs an audience to appreciate the art, has aesthetic qualities that lead to an emotional reaction with the audience). Not everything needs a precise definition nor an all-encompassing criterion.

Yes. People constantly describe certain chess matches between grandmasters as "beautiful" and various other aesthetic qualities. I don't see why this can't be extrapolated to board games in general.

If so, is there a limit on what kind of game could and couldn't be used to "create art" in this sense you are using the term?

To use the instrument analogy, different instruments can do different things. A bugle is more limited than a trumpet. Banging on a pot is more limited than playing on a full drum set. The art that can be created is comparatively limited, but it doesn't stop being art.

I would say that composers and songwriters only become artists once performers actually perform their piece with instruments made by humans, be it through artisans or factory workers. It's a collaborative effort between composers/songwriters, the workers who make the instruments, and the performers. Hell, you could throw in the audience while we're at it. The art, music being played, is a collaborative effort between composer, workers, performers, and audience and if any one of them is missing, I do not think the final product is art.

This is also one way to argue why AI music isn't actually art. AI music is missing the composer who came up with the sheet music, the workers who manufactured the instruments, and the performers who actually play the piece. At best, there's just an audience consuming AI slop.

I actually have come around to games not being art, but my argument is very different from the vast majority of people.

Games aren't art in the same way a piano isn't art and a guitar isn't art and a paintbrush isn't art. It's an instrument to create art, and while we can engage with pedantry over whether pianos, guitars, and paintbrushes can themselves be art, nobody seriously considers them art beyond "good craftsmanship automatically becomes art." It's the music being played by the piano and the painting being painted with the paintbrush that is art.

So what is the game equivalent of music and paintings? It's essentially every single instance of the game being played by the player. That is the art. The any% speedrun is the art. The speedrunner is the artist. The actual game is the instrument in which the speedrunner the artist brings forth their art the speedrun into the world.

It's stunning how games map so well with musical instruments, especially with PC games vs pianos:

• game dev = composer

• game engine = physical construction of the piano

• level design = sheet music

• saving = playing the piece at a particular measure instead of the very beginning

• mods = writing on the sheet music

• speedrunning = playing the piece with a much faster tempo because you're bored playing the same piece over and over again at the same andante tempo

• sound and visual from the game = sound and vibrations from the piano

• keyboard and mouse = keyboard and pedal

• gaming chair = piano bench

• videogame player = piano player

• "I play videogames" = "I play the piano"

You could probably set up a rhythm game played on a PC keyboard and a piano program also played on a PC keyboard with identical keystrokes and identical music being played. But the miscategorization would have people believe that the rhythm game itself is the art and not just an instrument like the piano program.

The first group are the strategists and puppet masters. The second group is cannon fodder.