Author: VD

Schools closed in Northern Italy

Sospesi manifestazioni ed eventi. Scuole e musei e cinema chiusi

La Regione Lombardia sta predisponendo un’ordinanza, firmata dal presidente Attilio Fontana di concerto con il ministro della salute Roberto Speranza, valida per tutto il territorio lombardo. Il documento, non appena emanato, sarà trasmesso a tutti i prefetti delle Province lombarde per la tempestiva comunicazione ai sindaci. L’ordinanza sarà efficace fino a un nuovo provvedimento. Tra i provvedimenti previsti sono contemplati: la sospensione di manifestazioni o iniziative di qualsiasi natura, di eventi e di ogni forma di riunione in luogo pubblico o privato, anche di carattere culturale, ludico, sportivo e religioso, anche se svolti in luoghi chiusi aperti al pubblico; sospensione dei servizi educativi dell’infanzia e delle scuole di ogni ordine e grado, nonché della frequenza delle attività scolastiche e di formazione superiore, corsi professionali, master, corsi per le professioni sanitarie e università per gli anziani ad esclusione degli specializzandi e tirocinanti delle professioni sanitarie, salvo le attività formative svolte a distanza; sospensione dei servizi di apertura al pubblico dei musei e degli altri istituti e luoghi della cultura.

To put this into perspective, these actions by the presidents of Lombardy, Piedmont, Emilia Romagna, and the Veneto are the equivalent of about 15 US states shutting down their schools, universities, and all public and private events. Contrary to what some people seem to imagine, this isn’t bad news and it doesn’t mean that things are worse in Italy than elsewhere, but rather, demonstrates the willingness of the Italian regional governments to put the interests of the Italian people ahead of the global economy.

Violence is NEVER the answer

Unless you are a Wardog. Then violence is the first, only, and final answer. Join the Replatforming and get a) an ebook, b) an ebook and an audiobook, or c) an ebook, and audiobook and a paperback every single month.

And if you are a Replatformer, don’t forget to use your coupons and download your books before the end of the month.

Leaving Las Vegas a winner

Bernie Sanders wins another state:

Bernie Sanders has won the the Nevada Democratic caucuses, NBC News projects.

Sanders, coming off a strong showing in the Iowa caucuses and a narrow victory in the New Hampshire primary, rode a wave of support from young voters, liberal voters and Latinos to a runaway first-place finish in Saturday’s contest — strengthening his status as the front-runner. It remains too early to call second and third-place finishers.

With 4.2 percent of precincts in the state reporting, Sanders had 44.7 percent of the vote. Former Vice President Joe had 19.5 percent, while former South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg had 15.6 percent and Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., had 11.8 percent. Mike Bloomberg, who is surging in national polls but turned in a rocky debate performance in Las Vegas this week, is skipping the first four states and wasn’t on the ballot here.

The results that have come in so far allowed Sanders to take the lead in the overall pledged delegate count.

This means that Bloomberg’s money is now the only obstacle standing between Sanders and the Democratic nomination. The results:

  • 47{de336c7190f620554615b98f51c6a13b1cc922a472176e2638084251692035b3} Bernie Sanders
  • 19{de336c7190f620554615b98f51c6a13b1cc922a472176e2638084251692035b3} Joe Biden
  • 15{de336c7190f620554615b98f51c6a13b1cc922a472176e2638084251692035b3} Pete Buttigieg
  • 10{de336c7190f620554615b98f51c6a13b1cc922a472176e2638084251692035b3} Elizabeth Warren
  • 05{de336c7190f620554615b98f51c6a13b1cc922a472176e2638084251692035b3} Amy Klobuchar
  • 04{de336c7190f620554615b98f51c6a13b1cc922a472176e2638084251692035b3} Tom Steyer

Mailvox: no market for a game channel

An industry veteran explains why it doesn’t make sense for us to create a game review site and channel:

Hey Vox – There is a hole in the community, but it’s not a hole in the market. Because there’s no market for games journalism.

Games journalism traditionally offered three things:

  1. New information about games that ordinary people couldn’t get
  2. Credible reviews of games that could guide purchase
  3. In-depth features, interviews, and editorial
#1 collapsed for AAA games because the game companies now all employ large community management teams to communicate directly with their fans. They don’t need or want game journalists as gatekeepers. #2 collapsed for AAA games, too. The rise of review aggregator sites meant that gamers just visited the review aggregator rather than any particular reviewer. The pressure on game journalists to have access and ads made reviews less credible, teaching people to ignore journalist reviews and just look at user reviews. And the rise of Let’s Plays on Twitch made reviews irrelevant because you don’t need to read about how a game plays, you can watch it be played in real time with live commentary.
The result of these trends was that game journalists who wanted to do #1 and #2 had to turn to indie games. That’s how you get Zoe Quinn’s Depression Quest being something worth talking about. But nobody really cares about indie games outside of that small niche. If they did care, they wouldn’t be indy. So the journalists all ended up cramming into category #3 and focusing on features, interviews, and editorial.
But here they ran into a problem, too. If you try to do Rolling Stone type content, you discover that game publishers simply don’t let their game developers be rockstar/celebrity/talent the way other creative industry does. You’re simply never going to get to talk to a game designer and get real truths anymore. And if you do manage to talk to them, it turns out gamers don’t really care anyway, because it’s a participatory medium and they’d rather be playing. The only thing that gets traffic is outrage, so you trigger outrage. But if you trigger outrage about anything meaningful, you lose your ad dollars and what little access you have left. So it becomes all faux outrage all the time. Meanwhile, fewer and fewer readers and more and more people just watching YouTube and Twitch. 
Meanwhile, even if you say “yes, we’ll ignore all that and focus on great personalities who don’t worry about ads and make money from subscriptions”, then you run into problem #4. Gamers don’t want to spend money on content. They get outraged if a mobile game costs more than $2.99. They are furious about having to pay $60 for a game that gives them 60 hours of joy. They angrily rant about DLC. And even so, such money as they have, they do spend it all on games. They don’t spend it on subscriptions. And to the extent they do, it’s clustered into a tiny number of top streamers like Pewdie Pie. Then it becomes a dry well. To put it into perspective, a gaming site doing 60 million page views per month, with multiple million-view streams per week, earning $1M in ad sales, might earn perhaps 1{de336c7190f620554615b98f51c6a13b1cc922a472176e2638084251692035b3} of its revenue from subscriptions. .
Jeremy Hambly of The Quartering has been trying to make it work, with a new site; as has One Angry Gamer and a bunch of others. No one is having any major financial success. There’s a community, there’s just no market.

OK Boomer

A Boomer booms defensively:

It’s always hilarious to read a Gen-Xer’s attempt to blame things on Boomers, instead of where it belongs: in Obama’s generation, GenX. Projection is ugly to look at, but it’s alive and well in the GenX Boomer Bashers. 

Barack Obama was born in 1961. The Baby Boomer generation ended in 1964. In addition to their vast panoply of other generational flaws, Boomers are observably stupid.

A hard no

I’m with JJ Watts on the new NFL proposal to the NFLPA:

The new proposal includes expanding the NFL’s regular-season schedule to 17 games, which wouldn’t go into effect until 2021 at the earliest. ESPN’s Adam Schefter reported earlier this week that the proposal would also boost the sport’s postseason from six teams per conference to seven.

The NFL has been remarkably stupid under Roger Goodell. But this takes the cake, especially in light of the appearance of a new potential competitor. Watering down the regular season AND the postseason defies belief.

All sports leagues make changes in the hopes of increasing revenue. But as NASCAR has demonstrated over the last decade, it’s very far from impossible for these changes to result in steeply declining revenues.

The importance of rhetoric

No emotion, no victory:

The American media strategist Bill Knapp, who helped Obama into office in 2008, flies over to start preparing David for TV interviews. At the end of a long day, Bill takes me aside.

‘I gotta be honest with you,’ he says. ‘You’re never going to win this one unless you have an emotional argument for Remain. And you’ve gotta have a better answer on immigration.’

Of course, Bill has zoomed in straight away on our two core problems — problems we never resolve.

It’s true our message isn’t a very emotive one. No one is pretending the EU is a perfect institution. Quite the opposite. We’ve spent years arguing for reform. Securing our special status.

Essentially, we’re stuck arguing for a marriage we’ve just taken to mediation. Saying: ‘It’s about more than just the relationship; it’s about the kids — and their kids. The house, the car, the holidays, our social life. About our lifestyle.’

But still, at the core, we’re having to mount an argument for what appears to be a soured relationship – and this is hard.

All the emotional energy is with the other side, the side that chants for liberty, freedom, a fresh start.

Immigration is a losing issue everywhere, except in the United States. But soon, it will be here too. Because the immigration = economic growth = societal wealth argument is now as observably and objectively false as the free trade = economic growth = societal prosperity argument.

Go ahead, call that “bluff”

It’s going to be an interesting debate for future generations. Who was more stupid, Prince Harry or Meghan Markle?

Meghan Markle has told friends there is nothing ‘legally stopping’ her and Prince Harry from using their Sussex Royal name, despite the Queen banning them from using it, DailyMail.com has learned.

The 38-year-old complained to her inner circle that using the name ‘shouldn’t even be an issue in the first place and it’s not like they want to be in the business of selling T-shirts and pencils,’ the insider said.

They added: ‘Meghan said she’s done with the drama and has no room in her life for naysayers, and the same goes for Harry.’

On Tuesday, DailyMail revealed the Queen and senior officials agreed the two could no longer keep the word ‘royal’ in their ‘branding’, despite the likely thousands of dollars Meghan and Harry have already sunk into their website and trademark applications.

There was nothing “legally stopping” Princess Diana from driving through that tunnel in Paris either….

Repatriation or war

Those are always just two options. And there is no guarantee the native population will win the latter:

An Indian minister known for fiery and inflammatory rhetoric has declared that India’s Muslims should have been shipped to Pakistan at the time of partition in 1947, arguing the move would have saved the country a lot of trouble.

The controversial comment came from Giriraj Singh, minister of Animal Husbandry, Dairy and Fisheries, during a recent address in Purnia. He suggested that widespread unrest over two contentious laws – the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) and a proposed National Register of Citizens (NRC) – could have been avoided had Indian Muslims been deported to Pakistan when the country was divided from present-day India.

“It is the time to commit ourselves to the nation. Before 1947, [Muhammad Ali] Jinnah pushed for an Islamic nation. It was a big lapse by our ancestors that we’re paying the price for,” Singh said.

From Canaan to Byzantium to the USA to India, the lesson is the same: always, Always, ALWAYS sink the damn ships. As Australia can confirm, the rabbits are never good for the native species.

A hole in the market

This piece is absolutely true. The SJWs have entirely taken over game journalism as well as far too much of the game industry itself.

An influential figure from a leading gaming website says that a clique of like-minded media figures are colluding to prevent right-leaning journalists and developers from having a voice in the industry. “If you were openly a conservative and tried to apply to any of the mainstream outlets that are on the coasts, I don’t think you’d have a chance in hell of getting in,” says the senior source, who wishes to remain anonymous for fear of repercussions. There’s a lot of us that probably think there’s a clique, well, that know there’s a clique.”

The “clique” is composed of journalists from well-known gaming and tech websites: among them Kotaku, Polygon, Vice, Ars Technica, GameDaily, Gamespot, Eurogamer and loads more.

“People won’t write something, or we won’t say anything on Twitter or whatever because you spew one wrong opinion and you’re asking for trouble,” says the source, who has admitted keeping their own opinions private to avoid sanction.

“Unless you don’t care about potential opportunities within the industry, a lot of people just don’t say what they’re actually thinking.”

The dominance has directly impacted the integrity of the journalism at the publications run by the clique members.

In one example, which was described to me in detail that I have obscured to protect my source, staff members were discussing coverage of a controversial figure who’d been wrongly punished by a gaming organization.

Several members of the site objected, saying that the figure did not deserve fair coverage because they are not a good person.

Their crime? Being openly right-wing.

This clique is constructed on the foundation of the old GameJournoPros mailing list that inadvertently inspired GamerGate. As a former CGWer, I find this absolutely appalling. So should this be our next project? If you’re a gamer, what would encourage you to subscribe to it?