Itch.io is currently saying the problem is Stripe, and maybe Visa.

Historically (ex: https://otakuusamagazine.com/visa-and-mastercard-refuse-to-work-with-another-doujinshi-retailer/), I’d say Mastercard and Visa are both to blame. But the jury is still out on wtf is going on here.

I’m not sure who pressured Steam. But Itch.io (https://aftermath.site/steam-itch-porn-censorship-collective-shout-visa-mastercard-paypal) is claiming Stripe and Visa are pressuring them.

(Speaking with Aftermath, Itch’s founder, Leaf Corcoran, specifically cited a notice from Visa as an incident that led to the sudden deindexing of so many games).

While Hercules is impressively wrong, I knew Aladdin was a fun original read when it began with ‘In the Far East Kingdom of China…’

Hercules, for all of its faults, actually takes place in Greece. Which is kinda sorta close to Rome (Hercules is his Roman name lol. Heracles is his Greek name).

On the other hand, Aladdin might be a fake story all together. As in, some French Guy may have made up Aladdin as part of his translation of 1001 Arabian Nights. IIRC, Arabs don’t know wtf that story is doing in the (French) book.

So Aladdin might be an entirely fake addition to the 1001 Arabian Nights novel. Canonically fake. So it’s in the true spirit of Aladdin (and 1001 Arabian Nights) to screw with the story anyway.

Btw: the original Aladdin story had no three wishes rule.

Aladdin just spammed the heck out of wishes. Got everything he ever wanted.

The only part of the Disney movie that’s accurate is when the sorcerer returns, teleports the Sultan (of China) palace to Africa, and Aladdin needs to use the weaker Genie of the Ring to steal the Genie of the Lamp back through trickery.

The princess of China (yeahhhhhh) helps Aladdin out a bit IIRC.

But yes, palace teleportation, sorcerer wishing to be Sultan, that’s the legitimate part lol

Remember that Discover is self-banked (unlike Visa/Mastercard that banks sign up with). This means that every credit line needs to be backed by… well … A bank.

Bigger banks mean more credit opportunities, better interest rates (etc. etc). Deeper credit lines.

Discover seems to be the best bet to me so far.

Discover is on the JCB, UnionPay, Troy and RuPay. (japan, China, turkey, and India respectively). Probably many more.

Similarly, a JCB card should work wherever Discover is. It’s a billateral alliance.

Oh, and all Discover cards work on Diners Club International because those two networks completely merged.

Alliance members are not 100% acceptance. It seems like 95%+ acceptance though (most JCB will accept most Discover cards and vice versa, though you will get confused looks from the locals). It sounds like there’s a lot of old equipment around the countries that break compatibility but cities and other urban areas with new equipment shouldn’t have any problems.

I’ll probably get a Discover card and start testing this out. I already have Visa and Mastercard but this new censorship issue seems serious enough to make me start supporting a 3rd place competitor.

Between Discover vs AmEx, it seems like AmEx is about elite club / customer service / returns etc. etc. nice features but I’m not sure if it’s worth the price.

Discover is free of annual fees, reasonable cash back, mediocre costs for the merchants (better than AmEx anyway and comparable vs Visa) and a surprisingly huge offering of international compatibility (RuPay, JCB, UnionPay, etc Etc). It seems like the winner to me as a 3rd card to experiment with.

What’s wrong with Capital One? I feel like Discover/Capital One / Diner’s Club network is a good thing for Discover customers.

Discover and Diners Club merged a few years ago btw. Discover also has an alliance with JCB.

So Discover network is actually really, really big.

Discover has an alliance with JCB. So that’s just Discover in the USA.

Ummmm.

ACH is how you get your paycheck, and it’s being updated to FedNow.

Zelle is an independent network as well.

And of course, there is Discover and AmEx.

There is also cash, check, money order. They still work today, just people largely forgot how to use them.

IIRC some Brazilian network was getting very popular off of this. If you want to look at non-US options.

There are plenty of competitors to Visa/Mastercard/Paypal.

Alan Turing, the father of modern computers, has an incredibly depressing ending.

Chemically castrated due to being an illegal homosexual, he died in dishonor over bullshit homophobia and new drugs that the 1950s possessed.

Charles Lindbergh was dining with Nazis during Kristallnacht and was a reasonably popular figure in the 1930s.

Yeah, welcome to America. We choose weird heroes sometimes. We have to shame these assholes when they make dumbass moves like this however. We can’t just let people like Charles Lindbergh spread ‘Neutrality’ or ‘America First’ values when actions are needed.

Have you seen the bullshit that Republicans read?

I’d argue reading those toxic masculinity self help books, and all the lives of rich assholes is what makes them act the way that they do.

Nah. My Republican friends are incredibly well read. It’s just Ayn Rand, Ben Shapiro and the Bible. Real books.

Honestly, Republicans are the types who really worship personalities like Elon Musk or other such people. I’m willing to bet that most Republicans read biographies more and try to emulate the lives of the rich and powerful.

It’s not that they’re ignorant. It’s that their culture is backwards. No matter how much they study, it just shoves them deeper into right wing bullshit.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Library_of_Babel

That is just a website demonstrating the concept of a famous science fiction story. Everything I said above remains true.

1. No storage can hold that. Its likely a computer generated system.

2. Any computer generated set of text cannot be copyrighted.

Finding any particular book in that “library” would require an index that is the same length / entropy as a full length book in any case. So its a stupid thought experiment to any information theorist. (I’m a Comp. Engineer by trade and have been taught numerous theoretical comp. sci. problems from Nyquist Frequencies, theories on communication, entropy and other such concepts. So this is actually well within my wheelhouse, training an expertise).

Go search for a book in there that replicates Shakespeare’s Hamlet in its entirety. The only way that website could possibly work is if the link you give me has the same entropy / information space as all of Hamlet to begin with.

In the case of copyright law, the Website’s code (including its text generating engine and so forth) is subject to copyright. But the Quadrillion-pages of “text” (most of which is random-gibberish) is not copyrightable.

You’re taking a fictional work and trying to apply real world laws to it?

Copyright assumes that Library of Babel would take up so much space as it’d be impossible to create.

Which is true. Every possible combination of letters, spaces, and characters would never fit on anything in today’s universe (be it a 24 TB Hard Drive, or even a collection of thousands of them).

Secondly: any computer-generated work is automatically non-copyrighted as per US Law.

Germany and Japan don’t have to worry about their largest Real Estate company being a massive fraud. (Evergrande) and that all the loans they issued going bankrupt. Both countries have (slightly) improving stock markets, while China’s stock market has been in decline for years now.

China suffers from so much youth unemployment that they also stopped publishing the figure. Its… really really bad actually. All the signs are pointing to massive amounts of falsification of records, rather than being honest in China. Suggesting that yes, China’s economy is terrible and they want to hide that fact from the world.

Japan and Germany have long-term problems. But China has short term problems occurring right now. Its not even comparable.

Lets reverse it.

Why must the circumference and diameter of a circle be related in such a way by two integers precisely?

IE: Why are you so confident in “proving” that these two values are related to integers? Especially if you’re a modern mathematician who knows about irrational numbers (aka: can never be represented by a ratio of two integers) or imaginary numbers (which truly appear in electricity: phasors and the like. Just because the name is “imaginary” doesn’t mean that they’re not real!!!)

I’m not denying that we got rid of Saddam. What I’m saying is that the move isn’t as self-serving as many critics try to force. The earlier post is trying to argue that we’ve somehow stolen the resources of Iraq, but no such thing has happened.

Its actually up right now today. The headline sucks.

Voiding the stock-based compensation means that all other shareholders will automatically get more control of the company. This is actually a good ruling for TSLA shareholders, not that the cult members understand anything about corporate politics, corporate control, or how shares fucking work.

There’s a chance Donald Trump gets disqualified and Nikki Haley is the only reasonable choice. There’s also a chance that Donald Trump’s shit mouth proves that he’s unfit for office the more he talks. He’s seriously not all there anymore.

Nikki Haley staying in the race is a big part of that. Just a few weeks ago Donald Trump confused her with Nancy Pelosi. The dude’s fully a dumbass at this point and is unable to keep his arguments or rhetoric straight anymore. I think people are sleeping on what Nikki Haley could seriously accomplish here. If Nikki Haley pushes Trump to rage against her and publicly prove how much of a dumbass he is, Nikki Haley’s got a good chance.

A lot of Republicans are going with Trump because they think they have no other option. Biden/Democrats are also pushing Trump as their opponent because someone like Nikki is the most problematic for them. So yeah, its an uphill battle, but one that I personally support.