Truly IPL (Intellectual Property Law) is a complete and toxic mess. I literally can’t imagine a more effectively harmful ideology. Only racism and misused religion seemingly has hurt and killed so many people. And they only stay on top because they are orders of magnitude older.
Just look at the death toll from big pharma’s for profit medical lobbying, and fracking’s hiding behind “trade secret” protections, and then there’s Monsanto doing it’s best to kill all the bees in the name of Round-Up profits and suicide genes aimed at trying to put DRM into the freaking food. All using legal frameworks ruthlessly bolstered and defended psychopathic coders convinced they’ll be patent aristocrats some day.
How many people died last year for want of medical care in the states? As of 2009 the figure was approximately 45,000.
Frankly I suspect the ultimate death toll from IPL is high six figures annually even if you completely ignore opportunity costs.
Clever how the government has made applying for disability require the very skills a person needs to find and sustain investigative or clerical work.
Setting aside that it completely dismisses job unavailability as “not our problem” which in and of itself is complete garbage since job rarity should absolutely be a legitimate factor in determining disability. If there are only four examples of a job a person can do in the entire economy then that person is clearly disabled.
Think about how broken the logic is. Any lucky fool can live off stock dividends. Is that not a common “job?” Wallstreet thinks it is. By that logic literally no one is disabled.
Again: Tidy.
So here are my remarks at the end of my most recent disability application. I’ll explain what I mean by some of them after the remarks themselves.
I applied before and was wrongly denied because my disabilities interfered with the application process and because my representation was frankly incompetent. They were all I could find via email only.
They did literally nothing but act as a form relay, and they never returned my medical records. As such the vast majority of this data is from memory and google, and I have memory problems. I cannot drive or use the phone to confirm this data or acquire more. If I had the skills to complete this process to your complete satisfaction I’d have the skills to work. (Clerical or investigations.)
I was not prepared for my hearing at all by my representation. I have never truly worked in my life because I have always been disabled. I couldn’t even qualify for my grade school basketball team because of my CP. I wore a brace on my leg before I could walk, and I learned to walk very late.
I do not understand why you are even asking me these things since the process assumes I’m lying for money anyway and demands documentation of everything. I feel like this application exists merely to provide the opportunity to fail.
I feel extremely lucky I’m intelligent and articulate enough to see and type this. Otherwise I’d likely give up and die homeless, as no doubt thousands and thousands already have because of this arbitrary and irrational red tape. It’s hard to imagine that isn’t the point, and as such it’s hard not to feel extreme rage at the entire process. I guess then you could add anger issues to my disabilities.
I have qualified for SNAP for probably over a decade. I’ve been disabled my entire life. I need this now more than ever not least because my parents are aging and I will not be able to help them physically.
I have more remarks, why the tiny character limit?
Why am I getting letters before I’ve even submitted this application?
Why is there no paper application I can download?
Ok, so no one in my life barring heated internet arguments has ever accused me of being anything below average intelligence. Indeed many have even grudgingly admitted to my high intelligence in the middle of ranting at me. I say that because it’s citation for when I say I am living proof that being intelligent and willing to work is not enough to have a career or even a job in this country or, it is proof that I am disabled. Or both. Take your pick.
This application process is a scam. It exists to trick the mentally or physically ill into disqualifying themselves from the aid they urgently need.
My country is an ethical disgrace and even if I am somehow able to navigate this process to approval my opinion on the process itself will not change until the process changes.
The remarks above are 89 characters short of the limit. I’ve already gotten two letters from the SS office, and I haven’t even submitted my application. I’ve been filling it out and saving and exiting. I MUST do this because no where can I simply download a PDF version for mailing.
I have been a drain on my economy for as long as I’ve been alive. Had they simply providing me with a baseline income this entire time I could have changed that. But they have made it literally illegal for me to save money and totally impossible for me to start a business.
Ironic in a nation that calls itself capitalist and is run by people who claim to be the party of small business.
Instigative, protective, and preventative. In that order.
Reforms required:
Abolition of plea bargains. Because an investigation is an experiment and you don’t haggle over findings. At best you debate to arrive at consensus.
No parole or probation. Because either a person is sufficiently rehabilitated to reenter society or they are not. If a citizen’s rehabilitation is in question then examine them till it isn’t and act accordingly.
Abolition of prison in it’s current form. The entire prison budget and deployment should be converted into a layered system of job training, education, mental and physical healthcare, and research of every relevant type. A place where prisoners don’t serve a fixed sentence but rather are inducted into a program from which only healthy prepared citizens can “graduate.”
Prisons today serve as torture chambers to terrorize the public into obedience and to satisfy their collective sadistic whims using primarily the poor, the foreign, and the mentally ill as their victims.
Prison should resemble primarily a very comfortable example of a school combined with a mental hospital. Among the thousands of advantages to this approach is respect for the cliche “innocent until proven guilty.”
Indeed to test the veracity of the system innocent volunteers should be paid to enter as criminals to in a double blind fashion measure how accurate rehabilitation procedures are.
All employees of this system should be required to complete the program and the program should be available to any on request. The objective isn’t to separate and punish criminals but you understand and prevent crime, to rehabilitate and improve the lives of everyone involved to whatever degree is possible and to research and understand when and why it is not possible.
People beyond repair should be kept in comfortable humane isolation until they die of natural causes serving society as subjects of study to the end of preventing the formation or perpetuation of people like themselves in future.
Everything about modern prison and criminal justice is wrong or fraudulent. I’d say 90% of the people in charge of it are corrupt in some fashion either fiscally, politically, or ideologically. The CEO of the private prison, the senator that gerrymanders prisoners in his district and like to play “tough on crime”, the sadistic corrections or police officer that just wants people to hurt or control for pleasure… These are the real and common truths of our “justice” system.
For the past month or so I was giving path of exile another chance. And it may have been fun longer term if I wasn’t essentially playing by myself. But I am, because real community is discouraged with two exceptions. Broken trade patching, and paying guilds.
The reason I don’t post this directly in a community controlled area is because the very fact that I’m saying something unflattering would no doubt call forth the “git gud” devknights. I know I’m not alone but all the people that agree with me already left or are wisely silent.
The only reason I stayed this long and write like this is because I’m a reformer and I hate running away from a fight.
Exploitation in any context makes me sick. And sooner or later I write about it.
Maybe in the distant future being honest about this stuff now will have a hand in some changes down the road. But I highly doubt it because the entire gaming industry is dogmatic and exploitative.
Two things have driven me off this time around.
1. There is only hardcore mode.
Hardcore across the gaming universe is a name for a mode where you are punished for dying. Since “merciless” (named thus because being mean means being cool) is the default difficulty by any rational measure, and since you are punished for dying in merciless, the entire game is hardcore by default.
This has all sorts of rigid control freak consequences. It renders all choice an illusion.
You play in an approved way or your character doesn’t progress, end of discussion.
I’d like a normal mode of play. Why have two hardcore modes? For the same reason we have two rethuglican parties. To serve the 1%. Because money, that’s why. They only want hardcore players because only hardcore players care enough about a game to constantly spend money on a game.
Every other kind of player is to be driven off because they are filthy poor people. They exist in devminds to be exploited. “Free” just means bait.
2. Pawnshop of Exile
In an effort to sell stash tabs and further please the overpaying, tryhard, gambling addicted, OCD, twitch streamer, base, they’ve intentionally broken the trade system, and kept it broken to keep the established (legacy?), cash paying, game rich… game rich, and cash paying.
If it was easy for normal players to efficiently engage in item/currency (and therefore account) progression, then there wouldn’t be the army of broken character serfs and plebs everywhere to make the game rich and paying feel special enough to keep paying.
This is obviously the intent given the trivial fees paid by vendors for even unique items.
The very absence of a money changer vendor is conclusive proof that they want the economy in exactly its current state, which is to serve the cash paying grifter class and fleece everyone else.
Had I posted this in the community one of two things would happen: The mods would delete it, or they’d simply encourage the devknights to dog pile hate me as an example to silence future dessent.
Here’s what would never happen:
Majority agreement or anything approaching even a hint of reform in favor of players generally. Because at the end of the day this isn’t a democracy. This is an autocracy. Players have no say, and anyone who tells you different is either deluded or selling something.
Game universes are all rethuglican pipe dreams. This is because devs are autocratic fops by nature that want to patent the vowels when they grow up and be IPL aristocracy. That’s what happens when you genuinely believe you deserve to be paid to infinity for a single act of work.
The trade system is intentionally broken to increase profitability for GGG, and “git gud scrub” is the encouraged response type to any systemic complaint, legitimate or not.
As a non cash paying player you have one purpose. To lick paying player boot. You exist to provide contrast and somehow improve their experience either as a gatherer or as a victim.
You are the serf that is perpetually stuck some distance from endgame viability until made a charity case by a cash or promotion (twitch streamer) paying player.
The point of the entire industry is to pay the publishers/devs and fleece the players. This is true of every closed source game. And POE is no different in that regard.
Everything that happens in the POE universe is about that one goal. If you think there are ANY other considerations, you are a fool.
The most successful games are the one that lie about that most effectively.
“I’m your friend! I’m here for YOU! I’m doing YOU a favor!” Said every merchant in history prior to behaviorally proving the exact opposite.
Update: 2016-08-12 0607 PM Atlas of Worlds
Oh boy more stuff I’ll never see because I don’t play one of the OCD created dev’s pet builds.
More items I’ll never own because I hate running a pawn shop and refuse to exploit players less informed than myself.
More trade chat price checks and 4chan in EVERY window because no moderators and no trade system.
More hilariously impossible to acquire items unless I’m already obscenely wealthy or a huge exploitative dick to scores of players I’ll never even speak to.
More items to walk past because unless I’ve bought 90 stash tabs I can’t make anything like efficient use of anything.
More solo grind in a handful of maps because experience scaling forces me into a hyper narrow zone for myself while making it punishment to help others or be helped.
More reasons for in game and real life rich to have an infinitely better time at the expense of everyone else because right wing fantasy and totally needless social darwinist economy.
Wake me when there’s an auction system so normal players don’t get ripped off by not knowing how to price rares.
Wake me when there aren’t a thousand arbitrary nerf exceptions to gem combinations making it impossible to free form a build into the endgame.
Wake me when /b/tards don’t utterly rule global chat 24/7.
Wake me when a player can actually fully play the game without a dozen third party tools and pages.
Wake me when the community will do anything other than literally pay in either time or cash to defend the people exploiting them.
And now?
More comments from boot licking game rich, dev knights, and even paid streamers and their minions ever so quick to leap to their lord’s defense and blame ANYTHING wrong on the player.
Tell me about how the poor street urchin devs have to feed their doe eyed pack of children.
Tell me how patent monopolies on the gaming equivalent of literary tropes through feats of doublethink and mental gymnastics somehow equals more culture despite literally illegal modification and participation.
Tell me how technically I could get rich enough to have an actual END game character saving up 40 billion scroll fragments and how that makes everything about the game economy just peachy.
If it weren’t for my guild this game would be utterly unplayable. But gee thanks for making that pay to win as well.
Tryhard dev knight dog pile and proof that the community is a mass of dev worshipping bootlickers, eager to rubber stamp anything that squashes casual players and preserves the obscene wealth of the OCD/pawnshop/cash burning class, in 3… 2… 1…
I won’t be seeing your replies. Yay for mute thread.
Pants of exile.
Pawnshop of exile.
And yet this hateful exploitative piece of shit is the best there is on earth.
I’m unsubscribing because I believe Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton are different ONLY in gender. I don’t trust her any more than I trust him. I marginally trusted Bill Clinton, and watched him be impeached for a minor sexual act that has probably been committed by many men in power all over the world. At that time, every woman in the USA seemed to hate HRC for standing by him. Now she’s a heroine to them? I’ve seen her speeches differ according to what group she happened to be speaking to and I’m aware of how many delegates she could afford to buy with her wealth. I had some hope when President Obama was elected and I did vote for him, but aside from the insufficient healthcare plan/reform he passed, none of his campaign “promises” came to fruition. We are still at war, still holding prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, still lying to US citizens and the rest of the world, and still mistreating women, the poor, the racially or religiously different, just the same as always. We are a nation of hypocrites, with just a small number of exceptions. Unless you happen to be a rich, white male, in this country, and in this rare case a rich white female, there is very little hope for change. I’m writing in Senator Sanders for President and after that, my involvement with politics is over. I respect what he was able to do, but after seeing how many citizens he had supporting him and how many primaries were stolen from him without consequence, I finally admitted to myself that fighting this farce of a political system is futile.
Here is the response my mom wrote and sent to the Sanders campaign after receiving an invitation to his new “Our Revolution” group. It’s a moving statement and I urge you to read it.
I’m too disappointed to hope anymore. I’m 62 years old and lived through the assassinations of JFK, MLK, RFK, and so many others who could have done something to change the course of this country, and you were my last hope. I will not vote for Trump or Clinton. I will write your name in, and that will be my last political involvement. I’m tired of hoping and praying for an America that probably hasn’t existed since the 1800’s. I’ve marched, donated, and watched my brothers and sisters die in Viet Nam and the streets of the USA for NOTHING. The only thing that matters to this government is MONEY and how they can get more of it from those who have the least. I am ashamed to be an American. We are the laughing stock of the world, and I don’t see an end to that viewpoint. When my husband and I are gone, I sincerely hope my son and his significant other can sell what little land we own and leave America for a safer place, if there is one left. I just do not have the will or energy to believe anymore. My generation tried, at least, to revolt. There won’t be a revolution. I wish you well and applaud your effort, but I realize now that if you did happen to actually win the presidency, they would kill you too. All the best to you and thank you for trying. But I can’t be involved again.
