erin

At least for me, the idea that a game might someday be unplayable for me doesn’t stop me from wanting to enjoy it. I like multiplayer games, and I have neither the means nor interest to host my own servers for them. I’ve gotten far more than $40 worth of entertainment from Helldivers 2. I think games should stay accessible and not be killed when servers stop hosting, and be available to play offline. However, the lack of those things won’t stop me from enjoying something now. I don’t consider that money lost, it’s spent, as long as I got an equivalent value of entertainment. I didn’t set my money on fire, I’ve gotten hundreds of hours of fun, far more than $40 could buy me elsewhere. I expect to continue enjoying helldivers for years.

You’re absolutely right, that games shouldn’t be killed when they’re no longer supported, and that they should be playable offline and LAN. As things stand though, it’s the same as spending money on an amusement park, or movie, or any other form of entertainment. If you’re not going to be able to enjoy it without those things, that’s your prerogative, but I think you could easily get your money’s worth, especially compared to overpriced AAA competitors.

Well, almost half of women that voted supported him! Guess we’ll just have to abandon the whole lot. Problem solved.

It’s simply unrealistic and excessive to expect people to stop using one of the most accessible services that comes built in to most phones, and has features that cannot easily be replaced. All my privacy and data options are restricted in maps, but I’m sure they still collect some data. I have no intent though to stop using a service that is incredibly important to organizing and planning my life (traffic, community driven reports of detours, construction, cops, etc, weather specific reroutes, fuel efficiency route selection) because someone online has absolutely unrealistic expectations of others’ data privacy. Navigating to someone in maps is not the same as uploading a picture of them. Google sees my location and my destinations already. All that changes when I turn on my location tracking is that so does my wife. Your argument doesn’t make sense and is unreasonable.

Are you seriously arguing that navigating to someone’s house with Google maps is violating their privacy? When I do share my location, I’m sharing through Google maps, directly to my wife’s Google account. Google can already see my location for maps purposes. They have obtained no new information. If you are in fact arguing that using Google maps violates the privacy of anyone you navigate to, then I just don’t agree and can’t take you seriously. If you’re arguing that somehow sharing my location to my wife’s account in Google maps is somehow fundamentally different for privacy than using Google maps is already, then I just don’t understand you. You’re okay with people using maps but not sharing their location within those maps apps. That’s a very confusing moral stance.

This has nothing to do with the tracking. You should have the same problem with anyone that has location turned on in their phone. Turning on GPS tracking for me and my wife has not given Google new data on our locations, as we use Google maps to navigate as is. I reject the premise that I’m violating someone else’s privacy by doing so. I’ve also opted out of any app using my location without my express permission. You certainly wouldn’t have the right to ask someone to turn something like that off simply because you don’t trust the corporations on the other end, because you have no idea what service, what precautions they’ve taken, and if they’re actively sharing. If you were going to do so, then you should also inspect people’s phones for having location turned on, and check all their apps permissions for location.

Consensually choosing to share my location with my wife is not the same as not caring about my data being collected or sold. I don’t have any intention to break her trust, but that has nothing to do with why we share location. It’s all about safety and convenience. I know when she’s working late. She knows when I made it back to my car safely after a night out. I know when she’s on her way home, even when she forgets to text me, so I can start cooking. As two gay women in a conservative area, it just made sense.

My wife and I share our location. We both trust each other implicitly and neither of us consider it a breach of privacy, but rather a willing sharing of information. I think if this is demanded of someone unilaterally, it would be both a breach of privacy and trust, but it’s just so damn convenient for our lives and makes us both feel safer. If I’m out late in the city to see a friend, my wife can easily see that I’m safe making it to my car and driving home. If my wife is working late and forgets to text, I can easily check and know she’s still in the building. As two gay women, it was a no-brainer for us. I would never demand that of someone. It seems like a lot of people in the comments see sharing location as an intrinsically harmful or negative action, whereas it’s far more context and consent dependent for me. Hell, I even share my location with a friend for a few hours if I’m doing something sketchy.

This might not really apply to you and your beliefs, but I think it’s a discussion worth having and considering.

There are (were, I guess) trans woman competing. Why would their presence change their right to compete? Additionally, the studies are few and far between due to very low sample size, but there isn’t good evidence proving that trans women have a statistically significant advantage in women’s sports after being on HRT long term (2+ years). Most trans women that previously competed in men’s sports perform similarly compared to women after HRT as they did to men before.

The conservative “evidence” for trans women having an advantage is simply pointing and going “see!!” any time any trans woman places better than any cis woman, even if they’re well within the statistical range of women. If trans people are allowed to compete, are they allowed to ever win? In professional sports, getting lucky in the genetic lottery plays a large role in determining success. Katie Ledecky is incredibly successful due to her practice and training, but wouldn’t be nearly as successful without a body conducive to swimming. What’s the difference between a cis woman being born with broad shoulders and longer arms and a trans women doing the same? No one is transitioning for a competitive advantage. It’s a ridiculous notion. There really isn’t a good argument against trans women in sports that doesn’t rely on invalidating their gender or vibes-based cherry-picked pseudoscience.

It’s my wife’s favorite game. If you do play it, after leaving the starting area, enjoy the song. Don’t beeline to the oak tree camp thing, it’ll cut the music off unceremoniously.