I cannot get enough of the Democratic National Convention vasectomy van: Imagine, in an election where, thus far, one party has positioned itself as pro-family—to the point where "childless cat ladies" have become a focal point, brought to the fore by vice-presidential contender J.D. Vance's catty, mean-spirited cable news comments—the other party is parking vasectomy and abortion vans outside of the convention.

Technically, it's Planned Parenthood Great Rivers doing it, making reproductive rights—and the Republican Party's attack on them—a focal point of this convention. But Democrats are, more broadly, all over the place this first night of the DNC, as if they can't quite figure out what they're all about or where they want to go, whether they're the party of joy or a party that just dealt with a succession crisis, or a party that's riven by the Israel-Hamas conflict or a party that stands in defiance of purported Republican attacks on essential freedoms.

Consider the new ad, unveiled by Vice President Kamala Harris' presidential campaign:

DNC airs new "Freedom" ad to kick off the Democratic Convention pic.twitter.com/lXLqKi2rAN

— Kamala HQ (@KamalaHQ) August 20, 2024

But such an ad assumes Americans have short memories. Ones that forget all the regulations Democrats have imposed that have driven up housing costs. Ones that forget how people were not enjoying freedom when they were shut inside their homes during the COVID-19 pandemic, or forced to stay home from school and church, by blue-staters. Ones that forget the last decade of (Democrat-enforced) culture war language policing and hypersensitivity to all manner of grievance. Democrats aren't really the party of freedom, they're the party of dictating, in ways big and small, how you live, either for your own good or the greater good, as they define it.

What exactly are they for? The first night of the DNC was a good reminder of the party's schizophrenia. New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's (D–N.Y.) speech was excellent, proving that they have at least one promising young talent waiting in the wings. Formerly an outsider given a paltry 90-second speaking slot, Ocasio-Cortez has earned her spot as a Democratic Party mainstay, a primetime speaker whose name is chanted by an adoring arena. (This undeniable charisma is bad for the rest of us, mind you, as Ocasio-Cortez is economically illiterate and embraces Bernie Sanders-style socialism.)

At times, they veered away from light-touch diversity—a raft of speakers from all different backgrounds—and toward more explicit identity politics. Hillary Clinton's speech was all about shattering the glass ceiling. Democratic National Committee Chair Jaime Harrison emphasized that a "black convention chair and a black D.N.C. chair lead us in nominating a black and [Asian American and Pacific Islander] woman to be the next president," saying that "this election is about every little boy inspired by a party chair who looks like them, and every little girl who will finally see a president who looks like her." (I highly doubt young children are paying attention to the party chair.)

This emphasis—on being a candidate of firsts, on the "I'm with her" mentality—is especially interesting because it's one Harris has steered away from, ostensibly learning from the mistakes of Clinton's failed 2016 run. Ocasio-Cortez directly inverted this emphasis in her speech, shifting from voters being with the candidate to the candidate being with the voters. "If you are a working parent trying to afford rent and childcare, Kamala is for you," said Ocasio-Cortez. "If you are a senior who has to go back to work because your retirement didn't stretch far enough, Kamala is for you. If you're an immigrant family just starting your American story, Kamala is for you."

Everyone who covered 2016 will overthink that race forever, but AOC's "Kamala is for you" sounds like the inversion of "I'm with her."

— David Weigel (@daveweigel) August 20, 2024

Oh, and President Joe Biden also spoke. He didn't really say much of note. It was fine. But the fanfare was…aggressive, thanking Biden constantly for his service, for his leadership, for everything. Also, implicitly, for stepping aside and putting the presidency back in play.

The shenanigans also turned destructive: Outside of the security perimeter, protesters—a smaller turnout than was expected—succeeded at tearing down gates and fencing.

Tearing down the fence. Others trying to keep the peace pic.twitter.com/jgVU4WklS2

— Nancy Rommelmann (@NancyRomm) August 19, 2024

Things turned chaotic:

Last vid of the day. Two funny things: the protesters saying to the cops, "Don't hurt her!" and, once I wriggled out of the fencing (with the help of two dudes pulling me), who is standing there cool as a cucumber saying, "Hello Nancy" but @mcmoynihan. Hello from Chicago! pic.twitter.com/vjhFdnREj9

— Nancy Rommelmann (@NancyRomm) August 20, 2024

There were also some protesters inside:

Group of protesters with their backs turned to Biden and hands over their mouths. They're quiet. So far unmolested by officials or security. pic.twitter.com/VuKcwc1Kzc

— Alex Seitz-Wald (@aseitzwald) August 20, 2024

It remains to be seen how much trouble the protesters will cause, and how the situation in Gaza will be discussed on the main stage, but the protests outside were a decidedly inauspicious start.

Scenes from New York: Why does 3.5 grams of weed, purchased legally, cost $60 in New York, while unlicensed bodegas are selling for $40? Some of it also has to do with the federal, state, and local taxes (including 13 percent sales tax upon purchase) that must be forked over by dispensaries, as well as the security systems they must put in place to keep their wares safe. They're also trying to recoup the costs of legal fees and securing expensive licenses to operate legally.

Basically, everywhere a legit entrepreneur turns, the state has made it quite expensive for them to simply open up a cannabis business. And a big chunk of that cost gets passed down to the consumer.

QUICK HITS

• "Democrats begin their four-day national convention Monday in the city that perhaps best exemplifies the chasm between their party's dreamy policy rhetoric and grim real-world results," writes Reason's Matt Welch. "As a direct result of one-party misrule (there are zero Republicans on the 50-seat City Council), Chicago's tax base is decreasing, not increasing. The population has declined for nine consecutive years, is shrinking by an annual rate of 1 percent, and is at its lowest point in more than a century."
• Anarcho-brat summer (if you're confused, read this):

Anarcho-brat flag flown at March on the DNC. pic.twitter.com/BFptgEUGa0

— Ford Fischer (@FordFischer) August 19, 2024

• "US job growth in the year through March was likely far less robust than initially estimated, which risks fueling concerns that the Federal Reserve is falling further behind the curve to lower interest rates," reports Bloomberg.
• Protests are still happening in Venezuela, where Nicolas Maduro has wrongly declared himself victorious in the latest presidential election (and refused to release results corroborating the outcome).
• On Friday, The San Francisco Standard published a piece titled "How ex-liberal billionaires Ben and Felicia Horowitz made a MAGA U-turn," which essentially spends a lot of words grappling with the idea that Felicia, a black woman, could not possibly authentically support former President Donald Trump, and that there must be some kind of mental derangement at play:

Wow, @micsolana nails it exactly. Amazing. @PirateWires for the win. pic.twitter.com/ikUrZrTJeZ

— benahorowitz.eth (@bhorowitz) August 19, 2024

The post All Aboard the Vasectomy Van appeared first on Reason.com.

A Michigan couple sued when their local township passed an ordinance to prevent them from opening a cemetery. This week, in a victory for property rights, a judge ruled in the couple's favor and threw out the ordinance entirely.

As Reason reported in January, Peter and Annica Quakenbush wanted to open a "green" cemetery, allowing people to bury their loved ones in a natural and environmentally friendly manner, free of chemicals like formaldehyde and coffins containing metal. They specifically intended to establish a conservation burial ground, in which decedents would be buried in biodegradable coverings like cotton shrouds or wooden caskets and the burial sites would be marked by natural landmarks like rocks or native trees. The site would otherwise remain an undisturbed forest.

The Quakenbushes bought a 20-acre plot near Brooks Township and started putting together the necessary paperwork. But local officials had other plans in mind, and in June 2023, the Brooks Township Board passed an ordinance prohibiting the establishment of all new cemeteries.

"In the past, cemeteries elsewhere have taken up large amounts of sometimes otherwise productive land," the ordinance declared. "Cemetery landscaping, grass cutting, monument repair and upkeep costs have increased dramatically over time. The problems associated with abandoned or 'orphan' cemeteries have increased throughout Michigan, and citizens look to the local municipal government…to take over abandoned or orphan cemeteries."

According to the Quakenbushes' lawsuit, after they first inquired about establishing their cemetery in February 2022, a zoning official emailed the township's legal counsel. "It is our general recommendation that new private cemeteries not be allowed within the Township except under certain very limited circumstances," the attorney replied. "Almost certainly, at some time in the future (whether in a few decades or the distance [sic] future), the family members of the deceased individuals will no longer own the parcel involved. What happens to the burials then? In all likelihood, it would devalue the  property and make it unmarketable or difficult to sell."

"My response to that is, what does it matter? It's not your property," Renée Flaherty, an attorney with the Institute for Justice who represented the Quakenbushes, told Reason in January.

Besides, there were numerous mechanisms in place to prevent that outcome: Establishing a conservation burial ground in accordance with the Green Burial Council's criteria, as is the Quakenbushes' intent, requires obtaining a conservation easement—preventing the land from being used for other purposes—and partnering with a land conservancy that can maintain the property in perpetuity.

Michigan state law also requires all private cemeteries to establish an "endowment and perpetual care trust fund," with $50,000 to start and monthly deposits of "not less than 15% of all proceeds received."

"Nearly 250 people had reserved a burial plot even while the ban was in place," a local FOX affiliate reported.

The Quakenbushes sued to overturn the ordinance as a violation of due process. The township filed a motion to dismiss the lawsuit. This week, after hearing oral arguments, Newaygo County Circuit Court Judge David Glancy not only dismissed the township's motion but found the ordinance unconstitutional.

A written order was not available at press time; a representative of the Newaygo County Circuit Court tells Reason that the court directed the plaintiffs' attorneys to prepare a ruling, which the judge will review in a later hearing.

"We're excited and feel vindicated by this ruling," the Quakenbushes said in a statement released by the Institute for Justice. "We are delighted that the judge understood that Brooks Township's ordinance violated our right to use our property and operate our cemetery."

"The Green Burial Council (GBC) is pleased to learn that Newaygo County, Michigan Circuit Judge David Glancy rejected Brooks Township's attempt to throw out a lawsuit against the 'cemetery ban' ordinance," the GBC said in a statement to Reason. "The Green Burial Council has stated before, that we believe Brooks Township's ordinance stood on a weak foundation of misinformation about green burial's negative impact on soil and water, and other similar fears. Though individuals may experience genuine trepidation about a naturally interred body's impact on their environment, local governments can easily find scientific evidence proving no such impact when burial practices are performed according to industry standards."*

UPDATE: This piece has been updated to include a statement from the Green Burial Council.

The post Michigan Officials Tried To Stop a 'Green' Cemetery. They Just Lost in Court. appeared first on Reason.com.

The Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade set off a wave of new attacks on abortion, causing a catastrophic public health crisis and rapidly eroding our civil liberties and reproductive freedom. So far, 14 states have banned abortion completely, and others have severely limited access to abortion by criminalizing it after the earliest weeks of pregnancy.

Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic party’s nominee, has already indicated her support for abortion access and other forms of reproductive health care. At one of her first campaign events, she stated that if Congress “passes a law to restore reproductive freedom, as president of the United States I will sign it into law.”

The ACLU promises to hold Harris accountable for keeping this campaign promise if she is elected in November. Learn more in our breakdown:

The Facts: The Biden-Harris administration made abortion rights and reproductive health a priority during their four years in office. But anti-abortion politicians have had control of at least one body of Congress ever since Roe was overturned, preventing meaningful congressional action on abortion. Enacting federal legislation to protect the right to abortion throughout the country is a crucial and desperately needed step to rectify the harms of overturning Roe.

To be clear, abortion care was not accessible for far too many even before the end of Roe. If elected, Harris must carry out her promise to restore reproductive freedom by taking bold action to ensure that everyone can get an abortion if they need one, no matter who they are, where they live, or how much money they have. She must not only demand legislation that codifies abortion rights and invalidates state bans and restrictions, but that also ends discriminatory barriers to abortion care, such as insurance coverage bans like the Hyde Amendment.

Why It Matters: Right now, millions of people of reproductive age live hundreds of miles from the closest abortion provider. In 2023 alone, more than 171,000 people were forced to travel outside of their home state to secure abortion access. As a result of abortion bans and other restrictions, countless people are being forced to continue their pregnancies against their will. Some states have gone so far as to criminalize the provision of abortion care in medical emergencies where the inability to get an abortion puts the pregnant person’s health, life, and future fertility in danger.

In the two years since Roe was overturned, however, there has been a groundswell of public support for abortion rights and rising opposition against bans and restrictions on abortion care. People in states across the country — including Kansas, Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Wisconsin — have repeatedly demonstrated their support for reproductive health care access since Roe was overturned.

Harris on Abortion

The ACLU will use every tool available to ensure that a potential Harris administration delivers on the promise to protect the right to abortion.

Source: American Civil Liberties Union

How We Got Here: Making good on his campaign promise to end Roe, President Donald Trump appointed three Supreme Court justices who were part of the majority opinion that overturned the 50-year-old decision and took away the constitutional right to abortion. Since then, extreme politicians have increased their attacks on our reproductive freedom, enforcing bans that push care out of reach entirely in 14 states and attempting to use junk science to take an abortion pill off the shelves nationwide. These politicians even threatened to put doctors in prison for providing emergency abortion care to pregnant patients facing complications.

Our Roadmap: As a presidential candidate in 2020, Harris committed to working with Congress to pass a federal bill to codify abortion rights. She also promised to end the Hyde Amendment, which places restrictions on Medicaid coverage for abortion and has forced one in four low-income women seeking an abortions to carry an unwanted pregnancy to term. The Biden-Harris administration took steps to remove this harmful restriction and, if Harris is elected, the ACLU will urge her administration to build on past progress to fulfill her campaign commitments.

In addition to ending the Hyde Amendment and protecting abortion access, the threat of misusing the Comstock Act as a national abortion ban must be eliminated. The Comstock Act is an 1873 anti-obscenity law that regulates the use of the mail and common carriers to send or receive anything that is “indecent, filthy, or vile” or “intended for producing abortion.” Trump’s advisors are threatening to misapply this law, claiming incorrectly that the Comstock Act functions as a national abortion ban. To ensure that no future anti-abortion president can weaponize this antiquated law, Harris must urge Congress to repeal it. The ACLU has already asked lawmakers to introduce the Stop Comstock Act, and we will demand that any legislation codifying abortion rights also repeals the Act.

Additionally, we urge a potential Harris administration to robustly defend pregnant people’s rights and ensure all hospitals satisfy their obligations under the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (EMTALA), which requires hospitals that receive Medicare funds to provide emergency stabilizing treatment, including abortion, to any patient who needs it. The ACLU will continue to work in the courts and with coalition partners to defend emergency abortion care, including urging Congress to swiftly respond in the event of a Supreme Court decision that eliminates these protections.

Lastly, while the Biden-Harris administration made steps toward expanding reproductive health care and contraception access, it must go further. If Harris is elected, the ACLU will work with her administration to urge Congress to make needed investments in Title X, a federally-funded family planning program that helps low-income people obtain critical health care services for free or at a reduced cost.

What Our Experts Say: “If Vice President Kamala Harris wins the election this year, it will be because she prioritized reproductive freedom as a central tenet of her campaign, but that promise must be met with bold and urgent action. Harris has the opportunity to ensure that Congress enacts federal protections for abortion that reflect the American public's overwhelming support for reproductive freedom. That means demanding Congress send her a bill to sign that ensures everyone who needs abortion care can access it.” — Madison Roberts, ACLU senior policy counsel for reproductive freedom.

What You Can Do Today: Since Roe was overturned, abortion bans have gone into effect in states across the country. Today, anti-abortion extremists continue to attack medication abortion and emergency abortion care. It’s past time to make a change. Join our campaign to urge your congress members to pass federal legislation that safeguards our reproductive freedom.

Nintendo.com microsite – Official website – Wikipedia page

When you purchase games on the Nintendo eShop, you earn store credit. I usually save up a lot of my credit and purchase a smaller title with it. One of these titles I purchased a few months ago is named Little Noah – Scion of Paradise. After playing it for a bit, I was surprised that it was the perfect game to play on my commute to and from work. I played it on a few train rides, and I think I’m ready to share my opinion on this game. This game is something unique and now that I have beaten it once, I really want to talk about it. Wait, beaten it once? What do I actually mean? Let’s talk about it in this article, while I invite you to leave a comment with your thoughts and/or opinions on this game and/or the content of this article in the comment section down below.

Zipping Kitty Attempts

In this game, we play as an alchemist called Little Noah. She is in a long journey to reunite with her father. While she is looking for her father, her airship gets caught in a storm, and she crashes near a mysterious ruin.

In that ruin, she meets an amnesiac cat named Zipper. Well, she names it Zipper. Together, they start to explore this ruin because they encountered a dark wizard named Greigh, who wants to enable a powerful machine which is dormant in the ruin.

Now, if you are looking for a deep story… I’m going to have to disappoint you. The story of this game isn’t the main focus of this game. The story in this game is fine for what it is and does its job, but there is nothing more to it. Personally, I don’t think it’s a negative for this game. Because the story takes a backseat, the gameplay loop is a lot more polished. Also, I don’t think it was the intention to have a very in depth story.

The voice actors in this game did an amazing job and brought the characters and the world of this game to live. The amount of personality they brought to their characters is really well done and really fits the atmosphere of this game like a glove. The amazing voice acting is one of the main reasons why I didn’t mind the “To be continued” at the end of the game at all. This small title really feels like the developers are testing the water if people who be interested in a larger game set in the world of Little Noah.

So, what do I mean by “small title”? Well, this game can be beaten in an afternoon. Now, the game has quite a lot of replay value in my opinion. The gameplay loop of this game is quite enjoyable. It has quite the potential to grow into something unique that I don’t often see in these rouge lite games. But, I’ll talk more about the gameplay later.

According to various sources online, this game has been worked on by a small team of 30 people. Even by some industry legends like Yukio Futatsugi, who had his hand on another title I played in the past called World’s End Club. The amount of love and care put into this title is quite impressive and gets a thumbs up from me. I know that this game is based upon an earlier mobile game from the same developers called Battle Champs. Yet, I think it’s great to see the developers repurpose the assets after the shutdown of that game and make something new about it.

If you have ever played a game like Rouge Legacy, you’ll feel right at home in this game. In this game, you have to explore a dungeon and fight bosses. During your exploration run, you gain various special items that give you all sorts of buffs.

In terms of difficulty, this game is very balanced. While you can get lucky and get amazing items and buffs to make it quite far in the game, with enough skill and understanding of the game… you can even outplay the game if you get bad items and not good buffs. Now, I’m reading mixed things about the hard difficulty online, but I have been playing through this game on normal difficulty and I found it pretty fair and balanced. So, let’s do one more dive to explain how this game works.

One More Dive

I want to talk about the unique mechanic in this game. The combat system in this game is something I wanted to play for a long while. In this game, you are accompanied by Lilliputs. These are special creatures who attack for you. You start each run with three basic Lilliputs. During your run, you can find other Lilliputs and make yourself stronger.

Each Lilliput is very different in terms of strength, element, attack, and unique attack. You can only have five Lilliputs for your main attacks, and you have two special attack slots where you can place one Lilliput in each. So, you really need to balance your Lilliputs well. The order is also quite important, you don’t want a whole row of slow attacking Lilliputs in an area with a lot of range attacking enemies. Also, you don’t want to use a weak element compared to the enemies you are facing. If you are focusing on wind, you will have trouble with fire enemies.

It’s extremely important to understand your Lilliputs. Since, once you started an attack, you are somewhat locked into that attack. You can’t start another attack while an attack is in progress, excluding the special attacks that is. So, if the enemy moves to the other side of your attack, though luck. This game is a whole balancing and time act, and it’s a lot of fun. The randomness in this whole game makes each run unique, and you can never predict how far you’ll be able to go.

Now, dying in this game isn’t the worst thing. All your items and Lilliputs get converted into mana, which you can use to repair your airship. The more you repair your airship, the more advantages and buffs you can unlock to make even better runs. You can also use special treasure chests you can pick up in your run to either increase the strength of your unlocked Lilliputs or give to Zipper for a special bonus for your next run.

So, how does a run go? Well, allow me to compare it to a crusade in Cult of the Lamb to a degree. In that game, you go into a dungeon, and you have to go from room to room, defeating every enemy in that room before you can progress to the next room. Unlike Cult of the Lamb, some rooms give you a special challenge. These challenges are reaching a certain amount of chained damage or hits, not being hit or defeating all the enemies in a limited amount of time. When you complete this challenge, you receive an additional bonus when you defeat the room.

There are also special rooms that can spawn. A shop where you can spend the gold you earn during a run, platform challenges with a strong treasure chest at the end, (combat) challenge rooms and rooms where you can get special buffs from a crystal and a room where you can get Lilliputs or a buff item. All of these special rooms have a special icon on the map. The map also shows little icons when there is still something you can pick up in the room.

Complete exploration of a dungeon is a very risk/reward thing. You do risk your health to go into an additional room to get additional buffs, or do you want to save your health for the next (mid)boss level? In order to beat this game, you have to beat three worlds. Each world works like this: level – level – midboss – level – boss. Be warned, you can only replenish your health potions at the start of a level. During (mid)boss fights, you can’t replenish your health potions, so keep that in mind when you are deciding if it’s worth the risk to go into that challenge platforming room.

Overall, the gameplay in the dungeon is quite addictive and the fast-paced decision-making you have to make is something that got me hooked. I don’t spend a lot of time on my airship, outside repairing it and setting up the right buffs for my next run. I always want to do one more dive and try and beat the game again. Now, the airship itself is build quite well. You can also re-read the tutorial boxes in case you want to refresh your memory on certain mechanics.

Repetition of Diving

Something that really impressed me is how smooth this game actually runs. The optimization of this game is incredible. I didn’t have any frame rate issues or slowdowns at all. Even when I’m preforming my ultimate attack, which causes a lot of visual flair and effects on the screen.

The controls are extremely responsive as well. Very rarely I felt like I wasn’t in control, and I think some of these moments might even have been a false positive where I was trying to blame my mistake on the game. In terms of the controls, there are only a few nitpicks I can give. The first is the decision to place “R” as the interaction button. This feels quite unnatural and took me some getting used to. Also, I think a left-handed mode would have been welcome since I think left-handed people who appreciate the “L” button then for interactions.

Why am I placing so much attention on this? Well, because you don’t pick up items or Lilliputs automatically. You have to stand next to them and interact with their medal or crystal. But items like health drops or burst gauges are picked up automatically.

The other nitpick I have is that when you start your dive, you get a fixed amount of mana from the first dungeon. Why can’t we skip this little cutscene that plays every time? It breaks the flow of the start of a run. Since you are stopped in your tracks every time.

Another nitpick I have with the controls is how the Lilliput attack order can be decided. The problem comes when I just want to swap two Lilliputs of their place. This is something you can’t do. Unless you swap them from your inventory to the main line OR from the main line to a special attack slot and vice versa. Swapping two Lilliputs in the main line is somewhat clunky to do and feels unpolished.

Visually, this game is extremely colorful and charming. While this is a side view game, like a 2D Mario game, the backgrounds are also incredible. The team that worked on the visual presentation of this game did an amazing job. I only have one nitpick about it and that’s somewhat shared with a nitpick I have with the audio design.

I feel like the frozen status isn’t communicated clearly enough to the player. Several times I was unable to move Noah and I couldn’t figure out why. It took me sometime to realize that she was frozen and that’s the reason why I couldn’t preform an action. Either a more exaggerated visual of a frozen Noah could solve this or more sound effects when you try to do something while frozen.

Apart from that, I don’t have any complaints about the visuals. The animation feels amazing, and you feel the impact of the attacks of your Lilliputs and it feels so rewarding, adding more immersion to the gameplay loop. This game is something where I felt: “One more dive” after each time I died and returned to the airship. Each time I wanted to go and explore the amazing caverns. While I was afraid that this game would suffer from long play sessions, I was pleasantly surprised that it wasn’t the case for me. At the end of a long play session, I have to admit that the game felt a bit repetitive… But I don’t mind repetitive gameplay too much when the core gameplay loop and level design is fun.

The only negative I have about the level design is that you very quickly see all the possible room lay-outs there are in this game. While the dungeon is randomized each run, it doesn’t take long before you see similar rooms. A couple of times, I even had the same room back-to-back. This isn’t a huge problem perse, but I felt that the developers could mask this a bit better with different decorations or minor changes like one of the platforms having a possibility of crumbling or not.

The music and sound effects in this game are really catchy. I would love to add it to my playlist. Sadly, I can’t really find a way to listen to the soundtrack or even buy it. The tracks in this game are charming when they need to be but are also quite action-packed during fight scenes. The sound effects and visuals inform you quite well when an enemy is going to attack.

Now, I have said everything I wanted to say about this game for now. I think it’s high time for my conclusion of this game. Let’s dive into the summary and my final thoughts of this game.

Summary

The bad:

– Some minor nitpicks with the controls.
– Story is fine, but lacks some depth and is predictable.

The good:

+ Very addictive gameplay loop with high replay value.
+ Amazing voice acting.
+ Breath taking visuals.
+ Extremely optimized gameplay.
+ …

Final thoughts:

This game is a small indie title created from the remains of an old gotcha game. It’s only 15€ on the Nintendo eShop and it’s totally worth it’s price in gold. While the game lacks some depth and is quite short, the replay value this game has is something that’ll make you replay this game just one more time.

While playing this game, I felt that this game was an experiment. The developers were testing the waters if the gameplay would work or not. This game feels like a prequel to a much larger game and if I’m right, I can’t wait to see what the full game or the sequel is going to be like.

Even when this game is going to be a standalone game, I don’t really mind if that’s the case. This game is a game I can highly recommend if you enjoy games like Rouge Legacy or Cult of the Lamb. While it doesn’t have a lot of, if any, base building… It’s another amazing title in the genre.

While outside of the combat mechanics, it doesn’t do a lot of things you haven’t seen (a lot) before in other similar games. But, that isn’t a bad thing. Since, sometimes a game where all the good ideas from other games come together into one title can be a lot of fun as well.

I’d love to see another game in this universe where there are a bit more stakes in using your Lilliputs. What if certain Lilliputs get weaker when you pick up items of their opposite element? Or Lilliputs that can do a special attack with another Lilliput present…

There is so much more you can do with this combat system and I think that if the developers expanded on the core mechanics, this game sequel could reach quite far. Since, the game we already got placed an amazing foundation for an amazing series. I love this game to bits and I’m so glad I gave this game a chance, since it was an amazing pleasant surprise to playthrough. It comes highly recommend from me. After I finished the game once, I let me hunger for more. I wanted to play it even more. And the fact that I barely have any complaints about this game apart from a weak story and some nitpicks… This game just has a lot of care and lot put in by the developers and everything works and fits together so well.

With that said, I have said everything I wanted to say about this game for now. I want to thank you for reading this article and I hope you enjoyed reading this as much as I enjoyed writing it. I hope to be able to welcome you in another article, but until then, have a great rest of your day and take care.

Score: 90/100

Steam store page – Twitter/X – Wikipedia

I know that I’m extremely late when it comes to the Palworld hype. Palworld released in early January 2024 and currently, since there aren’t a lot of updates dropping, the hype died out. Yet, the roadmap looks extremely promising. Since this game is still in early access, I’m always hesitant in writing about the game. Since, you never know which mechanics or things will change and evolve during the early access period. Especially since we are currently only at v0.1.5.1. So, I decided to hold off on my first impression/review article for now. But, I wanted to talk about this game. So, here are some things I’d love to see in the full version of Palworld or even in one of the next updates.

First of all, what is a Palworld?

Palworld is a combination of several games, all thrown into one. It’s easy to describe Palworld with saying which games it combines.

Foremost, at its core, it’s a game you can somewhat compare to Ark Survival Evolved. When I first started playing, I noticed the similarities right away. The way how you have a crafting system to build your base, and you have monsters running around you can tame/catch is totally here as well.

I haven’t played a lot of Ark, so I can’t say if this mechanic is also present in Ark… But, the fact you can use your monsters to preform tasks in your base reminded me quite a lot of The Survivalists. A game where you are stranded on an island, and you can train monkeys to preform actions for you. The big difference is that now certain monsters can only preform certain tasks, instead of the monkeys just copying you.

Now, a lot of other articles describe this game as Pokémon with guns. After playing this game, I think that’s a somewhat unfair comparison. When I think Pokémon, I think a journey with gyms and an evil team. I think turn based battles and a big ending tournament as its conclusion. While some Pals share a very similar design language to some Pokémon, most of the mechanics of what makes a Pokémon game aren’t in this game. The other big mechanic is the capture mechanic, but by now this isn’t exclusive to Pokémon games anymore. Especially since we have games like Coromon.

There are also influences of the latest Zelda games. Especially Tears of the Kingdom. There are these huge, strong bosses roaming around on the huge open world map, you can beat at any time. Also, the korok seeds to upgrade your character are also here in the form of effigies and Pal souls to upgrade your monsters.

This game really feels like the developers looked at all the games they liked playing, looked at what worked and threw it all together into one pot and shook it until it all clicked together. The mechanics of this game really click extremely well together. If I didn’t know any better, I wouldn’t be surprised if I said that this was a finished game.

There are some silly bugs here and there and in some spots, this game feels unfinished. But, overall the game we have currently is amazing and if you would enjoy a game like this after reading what I wrote here… Give this game a try. I only told you the most basic things in this game. This game is a survival game with elements from a lot of other games like those I have already mentioned but also Minecraft, Dragon Quest Builders and various others.

Let’s talk improvements

While the game is a lot of fun to play at the moment, there are some things I wish that were improved or updated. While you get a lot of warnings that there are: save corruption bugs, crashes and bugs… Besides sometimes the lighting engine giving up for a moment or the AI of the pals or enemies doing some funky stuff, I haven’t seen too many worrying things.

Take for example this floating rock screenshot here. I have explored roughly half of the map after 35 hours of play, and this was the only floating rock I could find. That’s extremely impressive, especially since if you look at the size of the map… It isn’t small at all. In the future, new islands and area’s will be added so if they deliver them with this kind of quality, I have no complaints.

Well, I do have one recommendation. I’d love to see more landmarks in the map. Currently, almost all the landmarks in the game are based upon the terrain. I’d love to see more villages or ruins of them. I loved finding these things in the Zelda games and letting my mind wonder what happened there. It’s a very difficult balance act, since too many landmarks would make the map feel crowded and limit the amount of possible base locations.

Basically, I’d love more reasons for me to go exploring these regions and get unique rewards. Besides completing the Paldex, there isn’t a lot of reason to go exploring in certain area’s. And when you have set up the right kind of farms and work stations for your pals in your bases, the chance you run out of resources is rather small.

Speaking about bases, currently you can only have three bases. Most likely, this is done to improve the multiplayer performance. Since, the game emulates the three bases in the background, so you can easily have a base close to big ore clusters to farm those while you are working in your other base. If you don’t place a cap on those, it’ll tank the performance of any computer or server. Yet, I’d give the tools to the player to increase the cap. Personally, I think Minecraft has one of the best systems with the game rules. You can almost change anything to your playstyle and even disable or remove caps that are there for performance reasons. You already have quite a lot of toggles and sliders in Palworld, but I’d also expand on that.

Currently, the building system is decent, but it needs a lot of polishing up. The biggest problem I have with the building system are the stairs. It’s a nightmare sometimes to place stairs to go from one to another floor. Also, why can’t we place a full wall next to stairs? Most likely because some pals their hitbox would do some crazy stuff? Also, placing certain items or crafting stations on elevated floors doesn’t always work the best.

On top of that, besides the visual look of the floors, walls and ceilings, what’s the point of being able to unlock stone foundations? As a test, I tried to build a high tower with wood and one with stone. I didn’t find a difference. I’d love to see more meaning to what I unlock. Granted, stone can’t burn down. So, if you have any raids with flamethrower or fire enemies, your base isn’t in danger. But what’s the difference between stone and metal, then?

I honestly think that it’d be a bad idea if PocketPair only created more content and not make the mechanics have more depth. For example, something I’d love to see them implementing in the pal task system is a mechanic I love in Cult of the Lamb. When you welcome a new member in your cult, you can set the main focus of a member there. I’d love to see that you are able to set the main focus per pal. For example, when things are damaged in the base after a raid, you select one pal to go and get the repair kits and repair all damages first before going to do their usual tasks. Or when you have a pal that can do multiple things, and you mostly need that pal to pick up items, you could disable their other abilities. Maybe we need some items for that and those items can be only found in the wild, and we need to hunt for them. That’s an interesting idea to lure players out of their bases.

Dreaming like a madman

There are some UI elements I’d love to see change as well. First, I’d love to have a mini-map. The compass at the top of the screen only shows things in roughly 300m range, and that’s too short. Especially since in some areas the warp spots are spread quite far apart. A mini-map where you can pin certain things like the nearest warp spot would be amazing.

Secondly, in terms of the weapons. I’d love to see their stats before I craft them. Now it’s a guessing game that if I craft a certain weapon, if it’s going to be stronger or better than the one I currently have. It’d also be amazing if the durability is shown outside the inventory as well. There is some space in the UI element at the bottom right, so why not show it?

Now, in terms of the inventory. Sometimes I have issues with combining stacks of items. Sometimes I have to do it twice or thrice before they are combined. This is a rather small things, but outside of those… I don’t have a lot of small quality of life things that I could recommend. Maybe that if you sleep during the day in your bed, you can skip to night if you are hunting the nightlife pals?

Maybe there is one quality of life feature I think would be amazing. Quite often, when I’m hunting the stronger pals, I have my pal instructions set on “Focus on the same enemy”. I think it would have an amazing option if you have a feature where you are able to say to your pal if they are allowed to kill the wild pal or not. Since, if they are dead, you can’t capture them.

There is one attack that is a double-edged sword. In the Pokémon games, you have the self-destruct attack. You also have this one in Palworld, yet, some wild pals with this attack always take it over their other attacks. These bee pals always swarm me and instead of being able to weaken them, so I can catch them, I just get blown up. You barely have a chance to do any damage to weaken them to make capturing possible.

I just remembered one other quality of life feature. You can create saddles, gloves and other things to do special things with your pals. But, why I am allowed to create more than one? I mean, I can only use one of them at a time and they can be interchanged. So, if you make a saddle for a certain bird pal e.g. Helzephyr, that means you can use it on all Helzephyrs you catch.

But the biggest quality of life feature PocketPair could add is a mini-map inside caves/dungeons. The times I almost got lost in these caves is insane. Especially since there are only a handful of rooms in these and it’s easy to get turned around and confused.

Now, to completely change the subject… I wish there was more music in the game. The soundtrack in this game is amazing. Sadly, there isn’t enough in the game at the moment, so there are some silent moments. A little bit more ambient tracks would go a really long way in this game.

But, I saved one of my biggest things for last. That is inventory management. This is a total pain in bases. Since pals can put things inside chests, you can forget organisation. Thankfully, while crafting, the game pulls from all resources in your base, but if you need a certain item to use at another base, have fun to go searching through all your chests. What I usually do, if I can, is start crafting an item with the one I want to move and then cancel it. Since it drops the resources then and there. Now, how to solve this without breaking the game and the idea that pals can put things in chests? What if you have a new skill that pals can have? An organisation skill and depending on the level, they either put red things with red things or make a weapons chest and come to complain to you when there aren’t enough chests for their organisation?

If your base is fully set up, the proper of a lack of depth starts to show as well. When you build your base, why should you return to it besides needing to craft or repair your weapons? Give us some activities we can do in our base when we build them. I mean come on, we even have the amusement furniture set. If only we could play some mini-games with our pals to increase their sanity for example? Since currently, there is not a lot you can do when a pal is stressed.

Of course, a certain balance needs to be maintained. The more things a pal can interact with, the more chance you have to create lag or overwhelm the player. Also, the more depth you create, the more things you have to maintain and maybe that’s not the type of game that PocketPair wants to create. How I currently see Palworld is a playground sandbox in the schoolyard. It’s an amazing playground where you can make your own fun but it’s only part of the schoolyard and only has a swing, some monkey bars, a climb rack, a small castle and a slide. It’s all solid built and amazing to spend your time in… But, then you notice the potential this sandbox has to grow. What if we enlarged that sandbox with another castle, so the multiplayer can be player vs player as well? Or wait, why don’t we add an underground to that sandbox?

All I’m saying is that currently Palworld has an amazing foundation. The biggest issue at the moment is that the game lacks depth. While the current roadmap has a lot of expansions and more content, I hope PocketPair doesn’t forget to also make it more than just surface level. For example, imagne that the raid bosses can be captured and barely have an unique skills. Why should the player do the raids then? What reward do you get out of it? Not all mechanics can be fun because they are enjoyable to do. Players will get bored and they will look for a way to spice things up or to challenge themselves.

Now what that said, I’m going to close off this article. I’m quite excited for the future of Palworld and I’m going to wait a few more updates before I decide to write a review on the game. But overall, I’m really liking what I see. The basis of an amazing title is here already and I think we are going to get an even better game when this comes out of early access. Let’s wait and see what happens when the first big updates drop. Especially the raid bosses that got teased a few weeks ago.

Thank you so much for reading this article and I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it. What do you think of PalWorld and what should be added or changed? Let me know in the comment section down below. Also, what do you think of my idea’s? I’m curious, feel free to leave a comment about that one to. But, I also hope to welcome you in another article but until then, have a great rest of your day and take care.

Even though Elden Ring won Game of the Year, five Nintendo Switch exclusives managed to take home an award.

Kirby & The Forgotten Land won Best Family Game and was nominated against Lego Star Wars: Skywalker Saga, Mario + Rabbids: Sparks of Hope, Nintendo Switch Sports, and Splatoon 3. This marks the first time Kirby has received a Game Award.

Bayonetta 3 won Best Action Game and was nominated against Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II, Neon White, Sifu, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder’s Revenge.

Splatoon 3 won Best Multiplayer Game and was nominated against Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II, MultiVersus, Overwatch 2, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder’s Revenge. This is not the first time a Splatoon game won at The Game Awards since the first Splatoon had won the awards for both Best Multiplayer AND Best Shooter back in 2015.

Mario + Rabbids: Sparks of Hope won Best Sim/Strategy and was nominated against Dune: Spice Wars, Total War: WARHAMMER III, Two Point Campus, and Victoria 3.

Finally, The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom won Most Anticipated Game and was nominated against Final Fantasy XVI, Hogwarts Legacy, Resident Evil 4, and Starfield.

Another Switch exclusive, Xenoblade Chronicles 3 was nominated for Game of the Year, Best Score/Music, and Best Role Playing Game; however, it went home empty. It lost to Elden Ring for the GOTY and RPG categories and God of War: Ragnarok for the Best Score/Music category. Regardless, Nintendo Switch had a lot more wins this year when compared to last year’s awards.

The full list of winners can be found here.

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 Nintendo has released a new trailer for the upcoming Zelda title The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom. The trailer showcases the many locations players can explore in the game. This includes the Gerudo Desert, Jabul Waters, Eldin Volcano, and the Faron wetlands. It also showcases the gameplay abilities, Bind and Reverse Bond. Bind lets players make objects follow Zelda’s movements, and Reverse Bond does the opposite effect.  The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom will launch on September 26 for Nintendo Switch. 

The full details via Nintendo:

Regions

Welcome to Hyrule, a vast land where Princess Zelda will journey through her grand adventure. Hyrule is a land of plentiful abundance, from the Central Plateau where Hyrule Castle stands enfolded by its Castle Town, to the outermost reaches, you’ll encounter new and interesting people in each of its diverse regions.

Gerudo Desert – The Gerudo Desert consists of scorching dunes as far as the eye can see and is prone to frequent sandstorms that’s no problem for the women of the Gerudo Tribe. Though there are many ruins full of mysteries here, and an oasis—a great place to relax.

Jabul Waters – Jabul Waters is home to some of Hyrule’s most scenic waterways. It’s also where you can find the Sea Zora and the River Zora, who each reside in their respective villages. Though they don’t always get along. What could they be fighting about?

Eldin Volcano – Daunting cliffs and lava flows dominate the Eldin Volcano region. Pacarico Village is nestled at the mountain’s base, but you’ll have to brave treacherous trails to reach the home of the Gorons. Those rocks may look delicious—alas, they are not for Hylians.

Faron Wetlands – The Faron Wetlands are a lush labyrinth of vegetation. As you wander the jungle you might come across a Deku Scrub. Rumor has it these peculiar creatures have a voracious sweet tooth.

During your travels you’re likely to encounter people dealing with problems great and small. Keep track of quests by browsing your Adventure Log whenever you’d like. Helping people with their troubles is a big part of your journey, and wise heroes are often rewarded for their good deeds.

Waypoints

Objects known as Waypoints are scattered throughout the land. Once you’ve discovered one, you can return toit quickly by selecting it on your map. Even with the benefit of fast travel, getting around Hyrule can prove challenging. At times like these, why walk when you can ride? Gallop right over weaker enemies to send them flying, and hop over small obstacles with ease. Once you learn to make a Carrot Echo, you’ll be able to call upon your trusty steed from anywhere in the overworld.

Smoothie Shops

As you explore you may come across smoothie shops manned by Business Scrubs. Here you can blend the ingredients you’ve collected into delicious drinks. Smoothies have different effects based on the ingredients you choose. They’re sure to come in handy during your travels. You can also equip outfits and accessories to enhance your abilities—and to look fashionable, obviously.

Abilities: Bind and Reverse Bond

Whether you’re trekking over rugged plateaus, through winding caves, or other complex locales, creating Echoes is key to success. But sometimes they may not be enough. A huge boulder like this cannot be learned as an Echo, and your other Echo won’t move it either. For obstacles like these, Tri has got you covered with the power of Bind. Use it to make even a massive boulder follow Zelda’s movement. Bind can help you unearth buried treasure, or even reposition troublesome enemies. You can also use Bind on your Echoes. So get creative and find ways to forge ahead.

Alternatively if you want to follow a moving object yourself, you can use Reverse Bond to go where it goes. Take advantage of a creature’s ability to fly or to move around quickly. Swapping between Bind and Reverse Bond is a great way to find clever paths forward. Let your imagination run wild and you’re bound to come up with all sorts of ideas. Use Bind in combination with your Echoes to overcome obstacles. Understanding how these two abilities work together will be essential to your progress.

Mysterious rifts are overtaking Hyrule. What else will Zelda have to contend with in her grand adventure to save her kingdom? There’s only one way to find out!

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The post The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom Gets New Gameplay Trailer appeared first on Gaming Instincts - Next-Generation of Video Game Journalism.

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Over a year since its launch, The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom is a rare example of a sequel that managed to invent the wheel for a second time. Where Breath of the Wild reintroduced the world to the sense of adventure that literally birthed The Legend of Zelda as we know it, Tears of the Kingdom builds upon the foundation that was laid by its predecessor and actively encourages players to go beyond the boundaries that were set in the previous title. The result is a revolutionary game that takes a familiar and well-trodden world and elevates it to - literally - new heights while similarly evoking a sense of nostalgia as players explore a world that has naturally changed with time.

My first playthrough of The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom was truly made when I stumbled upon one of the final areas of the game by complete accident. My own story of exploring the reimagined world of Hyrule will be very different from anybody else's and these are the stories we share. These memorable moments of discovery and excitement stick with players for years after they put the game down, even more than the so-called "Legend" itself.

Link’s new abilities in Tears of the Kingdom expand the scope of puzzle-solving, with a renewed focus on physics and building. This approach to puzzle-solving is completely unique to this title and flourishes at every opportunity it gets. One particular example manages to capture this extraordinary feat in what at first appears to be something completely mundane - an unfolding bridge. Polygon has already deconstructed this (and more) impressive feats hiding in the Shrines and Dungeons of Tears of the Kingdom - and so I link to their impressive analysis here. 

I wish to focus on the game's physics because I want people to know that I do find Tears of the Kingdom to be an exceptional experience when I play it. No other open-world game has captured my interest in the same way, with almost boundless potential to experiment and create solutions to the game's various open-ended problems. And it’s precisely because of this innovation that I find Tears of the Kingdom is also one of the most confusing games I’ve ever played. 

Where the gameplay (literally) soars to new heights, the story of Tears of the Kingdom is one that paradoxically represents the polar opposite, holding itself tightly to the legacy of The Legend of Zelda, at the cost of its own identity. 

Leading up to the game's release, we were promised a Zelda experience unlike we'd ever had. A uniquely dark atmosphere was present all throughout the game’s marketing, with imaginations running wild about the depths to which Nintendo would go in this new entry. The image of Link losing his arm was particularly striking to veteran Zelda fans and Nintendo fans in general - not many of their characters are shown to effectively lose limbs on screen.  The closest is Samus Aran and her experience with the X-Virus in 2004’s Metroid Fusion, and even this was portrayed mostly through text. Tears of the Kingdom was a new frontier for Nintendo as storytellers. 

While Tears of the Kingdom manages to commit to this promise in its opening set piece - with the creative excuse of reducing Link’s health down to the classic three hearts - this promise of new ideas is quickly disposed of in light of a familiar structure and general progression that seemingly betrays the ambition that exists in the gameplay. On a surface level, Tears of the Kingdom is about metamorphosis and change. Characters we’re familiar with are distorted and changed to challenge our perception of this familiar world, exploring how these changes offer new opportunities.  This extends from the large scale all the way down to the minute details. The geography of Hyrule has changed in the six years between Breath of the Wild and this game, with the addition of the Sky Islands and the Depths being the most prominent changes to the layout of the world as we know it.

While Tears of the Kingdom manages to commit to this promise in its opening set piece - with the creative excuse of reducing Link’s health down to the classic three hearts - this promise of new ideas is quickly disposed of in light of a familiar structure and general progression that seemingly betrays the ambition that exists in the gameplay.

The addition of layered subterranean cave systems similarly adds to this sense of evolution and natural change with time. The previously desolate Tarrey Town has burgeoned into an industrial hub for Hyrule’s rapidly developing construction industry, as a direct result of Link’s efforts in the previous game. This sense of consistency and tangibility between Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom is a part of the appeal of a direct sequel like this. Players are rewarded for having engaged with the previous game with their discoveries in the sequel. Even being able to call upon the same horse as you had in Breath of the Wild is a satisfying moment of continuity that reminds you that you are returning to this world as an experienced adventurer rather than beginning all over again. Despite being lowered back down to 3 hearts, you still have some tricks you can rely on, and knowledge that you’ve gained. 

These subtle but meaningful moments of continuity are then confusingly undercut in this game’s complete refusal to engage with the main narrative of the previous game. While I wouldn’t expect every shrine from the previous game to be present in this one, I was expecting an explanation as to where all these old things have gone to make room for the new. This extends more significantly to the disappearance of the Divine Beasts from Breath of the Wild. The four Divine Beasts stood as the primary objectives in the previous game and also doubled as that game’s iteration of classic Zelda dungeons. They also stood as landmarks against the natural landscapes of Hyrule, with a distinct sense of purpose and style in the areas they existed in. They’re borderline inseparable from the places where they reside, and yet they’ve seemingly vanished without any explanation. Where Divine Beast Vah Medoh used to stand above Rito Village as a guardian protector, the robotic bird is conspicuously missing and leaves a massive void in its wake.

The ancient Guardians of infamy from Breath of the Wild have all but completely vanished in Tears of the Kingdom - with a single one being stapled to the top of an ancient laboratory, without any form of explanation. While it was clearly a focus not to alienate players who hadn’t played the original, there is something missing in not acknowledging the journey that most players will have been on in the previous outing. Tears of the Kingdom attempts to have it both ways and therefore succeeds on neither scale when respecting new and old players. This inconsistent approach to storytelling leads to an awkward outcome where no group of players can be fully satisfied with the way that things have been continued in this highly anticipated sequel. 

Beyond the links to the original game, Tears of the Kingdom also betrays its innovative and transformative gameplay in terms of its own story above all else. Despite Link losing an arm and gaining Rauru's assistance, Mineru becoming a robot-possessing spirit and Zelda literally becoming an ancient Dragon, all of these elements are rendered moot by the end of the game. Link regains his own arm, Mineru disappears and Zelda is back to being a human again. These are pivotal moments throughout the story and are massively impactful when they happen - but I can't help thinking there should be some permanence behind these moments of sacrifice. In the case of Zelda, her decision to become the Light Dragon is one that epitomises a noble sacrifice that allows Link to take the final step to restore some semblance of order and safety to the world.

On paper, Zelda herself is left as a dragon for centuries; this moment is more than impactful on its own. So for her to be restored without much challenge by the game's end really feels like a "safe" option. Despite the time-spanning and long-reaching sacrifices that have been made to get to the end of Tears of the Kingdom, the game ends as every other - Ganondorf is defeated and peace is restored to Hyrule, with Link and Zelda standing on the other side.

Link travels to the four regions - again. Link fixes their problems - again. And then reclaims the Master Sword - again. For players jumping from Breath of the Wild, there is a recognisable formula at play that punctuates the experience with an odd sense of repetition, for a game built on avoiding linearity. Some interesting ideas and setpieces are held within a recognisable sequence that feels like it misses a beat or two through a dedication to choosing your own objectives. Open-world game design and linear stories can mix and often do so with compelling results.

This commitment to safety is prevalent to the extent that it feels like the game is actively acknowledging that the transformations that these characters undergo are harmful and the better outcome is to return to the status quo. Return to what we know instead of embracing new and exciting new opportunities - which is oddly self-fulfilling.

These subtle but meaningful moments of continuity are then confusingly undercut in this game’s complete refusal to engage with the main narrative of the previous game.

Herein lies the paradox at the heart of Tears of the Kingdom, and the greater trilogy that includes Breath of the Wild and Age of Calamity. Despite pushing the greater Zelda series to new heights in terms of gameplay styles and ideas, the stories are so afraid of embracing those changes to create something truly new. The transformative nature of these games and their narratives contradict themselves to create an overarching series that feels muddled and lost in its own ideas while trying to please everybody in the process. The champions die in Breath of the Wild, only for the plot of Age of Calamity to be a time travel story about helping them to survive. There's no weight.

The so-called "Legend of Zelda" has proven to be a restrictive narrative framework where each story is almost obligated to end in the same way. And while I'm not daring to say that there should be a game where Link and Zelda canonically fail in their mission - it feels like this framework is really holding Nintendo back from exploring some exciting new potential for the series and the stories that it tells.

For how wonderfully innovative the mechanics of Ultrahand, Fuse, and Recall are, they deserve a far more exciting story to be used in than something as muddled as this. When all is said and done, The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom is a game that is far more fun to play than it is to experience, thanks to the clunkiness of the story, and that's the biggest shame of all. I can only hope that by moving beyond this iteration of Hyrule, we're able to enter a new era for the series and really see some exciting ideas emerge.

Nintendo has released a new video for The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom, showing off the world and gameplay of the first mainline series game to feature a playable Zelda. The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom is coming out for Nintendo Switch on 26th September 2024.

With a focus on exploring this latest iteration of Hyrule and how Zelda can get around with her new summoning abilities, the video takes us to the searing heat of Gerudo Desert, and the village of Gerudo tribe, and the Jabul Waters, which plays host to both the Sea Zora and River Zora, who don’t always get along. Kakariko Village is at the base of Eldin Volcano, but this has been transformed by the weird rifts that kicked this adventure into gear, and you’ll have to figure out how to reach the home of the Gorons. And finally, the Faron Wetlands are all kinds of leafy and play home to the Deku.

Echoes of Wisdom will throw plenty of side quests your way, such as tryiing to held an elderly man cheer up his wife with a flying plant, save someone from being trapped up a wall, gathering up Cuccos, and dealing with a… a Tornado Ghost?

You’ll be able to zip around the world using Waypoints as fast travel nodes on the map, but Zelda will also be able to ride a horse and hop up and over obstacles. All you need is to learn the Carrot echo and you’ll be able to summon a horse wherever you are.

Smoothies take the cooking of Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom and blend them into something a bit lighter, as you can combine gathered items to make smoothie combos. Electro Apple mixed with Floral Nectar, for example. You can also use outfits and accessories to enhance Zelda’s abilities, like Zora flippers improving her swimming.

Another ability was also revealed, in addition to the Echo summoning. For larger obstacles, Tri will help you with the power of Bind. This latches any object to Zelda’s movement, from a huge boulder to a half-buried chest, and even to summoned echoes, if you want to have an impromptu spiky shield. You can also reverse bond to map Zelda’s movement to other creatures and objects, switching back and forth.

Echoes of Wiszom borrows the visual style of the Link’s Awakening remake, which was a real highlight from a few years ago, which was already rather delightful, but will make for a real change in the series by having Zelda be the main playable character, using magical abilities and her wits, as opposed to combat in order to get ahead.

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The new trailer for The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom is here, and it confirms the return of Breath of the Wild’s best feature – horses.

While the game’s previous video focused on cloning furniture, its new “Traversing Hyrule” trailer pans out to give us a wider look at the world, from Hyrule Castle to Gerudo Desert and beyond. How do you get around the world of Echoes of Wisdom? By horse, of course!

True, there are travel points to make use of, and you can always walk. But if you’ve played Breath of the Wild, you’ll know that horse-riding is just the best. Shield surfing may be cool, but there’s nothing quite like grabbing your four-legged pal and storming across the land. And you don’t have to worry about Dobbin snapping in two after walking five metres.

Related: ‘This Series Was My Childhood:’ Mario & Sonic Have Been Disqualified From the Olympics

Mounts aside, the Echoes of Wisdom trailer also shows off the many side-quests you can explore, solving problems for Hyrule’s residents. It looks as if Zelda’s magic wand will figure into a few of these quests, with the trailer showing her cloning a monster for a resident to gawk at.

The trailer also reveals that outside of the Echo abilities, Zelda can also use “Bind” to move large objects, objects too big to clone using Echo. The trailer doesn’t explain who’s going around picking up all the beds and tables she wills into existence, but we’re assuming that’ll be explained in-game. Maybe it’s like Spider-Man’s webs, and they just dissolve.

You can check out the new trailer above and get your hands on The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom when it hits Nintendo Switch on September 26. And if you’re wondering how the other top-down Zelda games have fared, here’s how we rank them.

The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom continues to look brilliant in this latest trailer from Nintendo that gives you a whistlestop tour of its version of Hyrule.

From Hyrule Castle to Gerudo Desert and Kakariko Village, the upcoming Switch game will let Zelda see all the sights, plus hang out with Gorons, Deku Scrubs and both flavours of Zora.

As well as fast travel points, Zelda will also be able to explore on horseback to hop over small echoes. Just create a carrot "echo" - using your ability to conjur up objects you've seen previously - and your trusty steed will come running.

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Zelda's solo adventure in Echoes of Wisdom looks ever more exciting as a new trailer showcases the areas she'll explore. Like Link, it has been confirmed she'll be exploring the world by horse travel as well.

Multiple towns and biomes have been featured in a new The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom trailer uploaded Monday. It shows the castle town of Hyrule, the hot Gerudo Desert, the scenic Jabul Waters, the green Faron Wetlands, as well as Kakariko Village near Eldin Volcano.

The Echoes of Wisdom trailer also teases the conflict between the Sea Zora and the RIver Zora, which Zelda will likely help resolve during her journey.

Zelda rides a horse in Echoes of Wisdom

In addition to showing off the stunning world that Echoes of Wisdom offers, the trailer also confirms horse travel and side quests. While not as epic as Epona, this creature will help Zelda travel across Hyrule at a much faster pace. You'll be able to gallop over weaker enemies and jump over small obstacles like small hills and gates. To summon your horse, you'll need to make an echo (copy) of a carrot. The carrot will then fetch the horse over.

If you don't know already, one of the main mechanics of Echoes of Wisdom is that Zelda can make a copy of almost anything in the game to help her.

The ingredients you collect throughout Hyrule can also be created into smoothies. Nintendo didn't go into detail about this feature in the trailer but said, "Smoothies have different effects based on the ingredients you choose." Outfits and accessories will enhance your abilities as well like an increased swimming speed with Zora's flippers. Zelda's outfit will change in-game according to what you have equipped too.

Another new mechanic was showcased in the trailer called the Bind ability. With bigger objects like boulders, you can use the bind ability to move them out of the way as Zelda walks around. Bind will also help you get buried treasure. Reverse bond is also introduced in the trailer, letting you move with a currently shifting platform or creature like a flying bird. This Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom trailer has certainly intrigued this casual fan of the series.

The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom launches for the Nintendo Switch on September 26, 2024. It's certainly going to be the most unique Zelda game on Switch.

The post New Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom trailer shows off its Hyrule, and an adorable horse appeared first on Destructoid.

Updated: August 3, 2024

We looked for more codes!

Cookie Run Kingdom is a hybrid game comprising elements of RPG and city builder. It is a free-to-play game available on mobile devices. Players looking to get a headstart in the game can use the below-mentioned codes to redeem free rewards.

How to redeem Cookie Run Kingdom codes

To redeem codes in the Cookie Run Kingdom, head over to the official redeem code website and enter your DevPlay ID, followed by entering the code. Once done, you can click on the Claim Reward option to obtain the free reward. If you are unsure about your DevPlay ID, you can find it by opening the settings menu in the game, followed by selecting the User Info option.

Working Cookie Run Kingdom codes

• MYCOOKIECHIMCHAK—Redeem for 3,000 Crystals, 1,500 Rainbow Cubes, 1,000 Choco Chalk, and 300 Juicy Stamina Jellies (New)
• HAPPYDISCORDBDAY—Redeem for 3,000 Crystals and 500 Rainbow Cubes (New)
• COOKIERUNBRAVE15—Redeem for 1,500 Crystals
• UPDATEFIRSTCREAM—Redeem for 1,500 Crystals and 500 Rainbow Cubes
• LOVEWITCHSCASTLE—Redeem for 1,500 Crystals and 300 Rainbow Cubes
• MISSEARTHBREAD24—Redeem for 3,000 Crystals and 1,000 Rainbow Cubes
• INCRK3RDANNIVERSARY—Redeem for 1,000 Crystals
• CRK3RDANNIVERSARYST—Redeem for 500,000 Coins
• CRK3RDANNIVERSARYA—Redeem for 150 Topping Pieces
• CRK3RDANNIVERSARYYE—Redeem for 5 Magic Cookie Cutters
• CRK3RDANNIVERSARYAS—Redeem for 500,000 Coins
• CRK3RDANNIVERSARYBE—Redeem for 50 Rainbow Cubes
• CRK3RDANNIVERSARYAS—Redeem for 5 Special Cookie Cutters
• GOOGLEPLAY2023—Redeem for 3k Crystals and 1k Rainbow Cubes

Expired Cookie Run Kingdom codes

These codes are no longer valid for the game:

• CHERRYSPRINGGIFT—Redeem for 20 Time Jumpers
• BRAVESPRINGGIFT—Redeem for 300 Rainbow Cubes
• HERBSPRINGGIFT—Redeem for 100 Stamina Jellies and 100 XP Star Jellies Level 5
• BLOSSOMINGGIFT—Redeem for 1k Crystals
• CRK2NDBIRTHDAYD1—Redeem for 100 Star Jellies
• CRKALWAYSLOVEYOU—Redeem for 3000 Gems, and 1500 Rainbow Cubes
• CRK2NDBIRTHDAYD2—Redeem for 3x all Aurora Items
• CRK2NDBIRTHDAYD3—Redeem for 100x Topping Pieces
• CRK2NDBIRTHDAYD4—Redeem 500x Rainbow Cubes
• CRKINGDOMWITHHBITS
• 1015CKCOOKIELIVE
• THANKX200MPLAYERS
• 0728CKCOOKIELIVE
• CRKWELCOMDISNEY
• DEVNOW40MKINGDOM
• 2022PPLSCHOICETY
• 0224CRKDARKCACAO – 3000 Crystals
• COOKIELIVECOUPON – 3 Treasure Tickets, 3 30-minute speed-ups, 2 Magic Cookie Cutters, 2 Special Cookie Cutters, 30 EXP Star Jellies level 6, 300 Rainbow Cubes, and 1500 Crystals
• GOMAGICOVENEVENT– 500 Crystals
• WEMADECKTOGETHER – 3000 Crystals
• CK1STANNIVERSARY – 5000 Crystals and 3000 Rainbow Cubes
• CRK1STBIRTHDAYD1 – 1000 Crystals
• CRK1STBIRTHDAYD2 – 3 Special Cookie Cutters
• CRK1STBIRTHDAYD3 – 100 Level 6 Star Jellies
• CRK1STBIRTHDAYD4 – 30 Time Jumpers
• CRK1STBIRTHDAYD5 – Three of each Aurora item
• CRK1STBIRTHDAYD6 – Three magic cookie cutters
• CRK1STBIRTHDAYD7 – 500 Rainbow cubes
• 12THBRAVEDAY0612
• 50CAFEREWARD1000 
• COOKANGJIKINGDOM
• COOSEBOMEKINGDOM
• DOMINOCOOKINGDOM
• JJONDEUKEECOOKIE
• KINGDOMOKING5927
• KINGDOMSWAMP0130
• KINGDOMSUNBA0128
• KINGDOMYANGDDING
• KINGDOMLILKA2021
• KINGDOMNAMDOBLUE 
• RUSWKGMLKINGDOM6
• RUSWKGMLKINGDOM6
• SOQCESWVJWEKZDVB
• TK2PO5GA87DBJALQ
• WELCOMETOCRKMATT
• WELCOMETOCRKJACE
• WELCOMETOCKSANNA 2021KRGAMEAWARDS – Redeem for 1000 Rainbow Cubes and 1000 Cold Crystals
• 30MILLIONKINGDOM – Redeem for 500 Crystals and 3000 Rainbow Cubes
• 2CHAMCOOKINGDOM2– Redeem for 500 Crystals
• BESTGAMEAWARDTHX– Redeem for 3000 Crystals
• CHIMNPERLKINGDOM– Redeem for 500 Crystals
• COOKIECHICKENRUN– Redeem for 500 Crystals
• COOKIEFOOLSDAYS2– Redeem for 401 Crystals
• COOKIERUNTWITTER– Redeem for 1000 Crystals
• GETUR7SUGARGNOME– Redeem for 7 Gnomes 
• HAPPY100DAYSGIFT– Redeem for 1000 Crystals, Exp Jellies, and more
• IELLBHSLKSKZHBGD– Redeem for 3 Cookie Cutters
• KINGDOMBERYLLULU– Redeem for 500 Crystals
• KINGDOMIAMSIXTAN– Redeem for 500 Crystals
• KINGDOMYUNIKO720– Redeem for 500 Crystals
• PARFAITSUBSCRIBE– Redeem for 1000 Crystals
• POONGDENGKINGDOM– Redeem for 500 Crystals
• TAMAGIFT500TOYOU– Redeem for 500 Crystals
• TIYSVCUKYDPPHTNP– Redeem for 50000 Coins
• WELCOMETOKINGDOM
• XYOKSPZLLUJYFKJN

San Diego Comic-Con is always one of the best events when it comes to cosplay, with the vicinity to Hollywood giving us impressively detailed builds, stunning craftsmanship, and, quite frankly, gorgeous people. SDCC 2024 was no exception, with the three-day event that ran the last weekend in July at the San Diego…

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Today, the Supreme Court declined to issue a ruling in Idaho and Moyle, et al. v. United States. Instead, it sent the case back down to the lower courts where anti-abortion extremists will continue to fight to strip pregnant people of the basic right to emergency care, including when their life is at risk.

While the court’s decision temporarily restores the ability of doctors in Idaho to provide emergency abortions required under the federal Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act —EMTALA— by dismissing the case without affirming once and for all that pregnant people have a right to the emergency abortion care they need to protect their health and lives, the court continues to put pregnant patients at unnecessary risk.

Below, we break down why the case matters, and what happens next.

EMTALA requires emergency rooms to provide stabilizing treatment to patients in emergency situations. Since it was signed into law by President Ronald Reagan, the federal government–across Democratic and Republican administrations–has consistently recognized that EMTALA requires hospitals to provide emergency abortion care to any patient who needs it. For nearly 40 years, EMTALA has been a crucial tool in guaranteeing the right to emergency care for pregnant patients in need.

Although the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade did not diminish these longstanding federal protections, extremist politicians still tried to prevent people experiencing emergency pregnancy complications from getting care in emergency rooms. In this case, Idaho, which has a near total abortion ban, went all the way to the Supreme Court for the power to criminalize emergency abortions required under EMTALA.

The ACLU and the Cooley Law Firm filed a friend-of-the-court brief in defense of EMTALA. We explained that the law clearly requires hospitals to provide emergency abortion care, regardless of state abortion bans like Idaho’s and others, and that pregnant people cannot be excluded from EMTALA’s protections. The court’s concurring opinion authored by Justice Elena Kagan, and joined by Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson, in part, echoes the arguments we laid out in our brief.

The Supreme Court had the opportunity to affirm that every pregnant person in this country is entitled to the emergency care they need to protect their health and lives, and it failed to do so. The court’s refusal to safeguard the right to emergency abortion care–and put an unequivocal end to extremist attacks by anti-abortion politicians on this essential health care –puts pregnant patients at risk and devalues equality under the law.

Two Years Post-Roe: Life in the Aftermath

Two Years Post-Roe: Life in the Aftermath

On this episode, we’re going back into our archives to share an episode that unfortunately still has deep resonance today. Last year, we asked you what a year without Roe has been like in your lives and you responded in droves. Today, with abortio...

On this episode, we’re going back into our archives to share an episode that unfortunately still has deep resonance today. Last year, we asked you what a year without Roe has been like in your lives and you responded in droves. Today, with abortio...

Visit this episode

Importantly, the court’s order does nothing to stop the chaos and confusion unleashed by abortion bans across the country, which still prevent providers from giving appropriate medical care to patients when they need it most. While the court’s order does provide a temporary reprieve for pregnant patients in Idaho facing medical emergencies, it also allows extremist politicians in the case to continue to fight to put doctors in jail simply for providing essential care. And, alarmingly, Justice Samuel Alito, joined by Justices Neil Gorsuch and Clarence Thomas, wrote a dissenting opinion that provides a roadmap for just how they would strip pregnant people of the right to emergency abortion care should this case return to the Supreme Court.

The dissenting opinion also indicates a willingness to endorse an extreme strategy to give legal rights to embryos and fetuses that will override the rights of the pregnant person, and could lead not only to a national abortion ban, but bans on other forms of reproductive health care like fertility treatment and birth control.

This case proves that this battle is far from over. Extremist politicians are coming for our reproductive freedom and will not stop until abortion, including emergency abortion, is banned in all 50 states. They already went all the way to the Supreme Court for the right to put doctors in jail for providing life-and health-saving emergency abortion care, and they will do it again if we let them.

At the ACLU, we’ll continue to use every tool at our disposal to fight attacks on our bodily autonomy. We urge Congress to act now and pass federal protections for abortion rights that will end extreme bans in states and protect access to care nationwide.

Seven out of 10 college students say that speech can be just as damaging as physical violence, according to a new survey from the Knight Foundation, a journalism and free speech nonprofit. The survey, which polled more than 1,600 college students, also found that since 2016, college students' faith in the security of free speech rights has declined.

"2024 marks a crisis for free speech on college campuses as international conflicts, like the war in Gaza, and domestic strife come to a head, bringing urgent political and personal issues to center stage," the report states. "With campuses cracking down on protests, political leaders casting a questioning eye on the decisions of university administrators, and emerging technology making disinformation easier and faster to produce, the position of higher education as a forum for open discussion has never been more crucial or imperiled."

The Knight Foundation's survey asked students a wide range of questions on campus free speech and the First Amendment in general. The survey also asked students to identify their race, household income, and political affiliation. 

Sixty percent of students agreed with the statement "the climate at my school or on my campus prevents some people from saying things they believe, because others might find it offensive." The figure is up from 54 percent in 2016, but down from a high of 65 percent in 2021. Additionally, more than 1 in 4 agreed that it was more important for schools to "protect students by prohibiting speech they may find offensive or biased," rather than prioritizing allowing students to hear a wide range of viewpoints, including possibly offensive ones. Students were sharply divided by political opinion on this question, with 70 percent of Republicans, 53 percent of Independents, and 45 percent of Democrats supporting allowing offensive speech.

Why do so many students support censorship? It's not exactly clear, but the rest of the survey offers some clues. For example, 70 percent of students, including 82 percent of Democrats and 59 percent of Republicans, agreed that speech can be just as damaging as physical violence. Forty-four percent reported feeling uncomfortable in college because of "something someone said in reference to your race, ethnicity, religion, gender, or sexual orientation—whether or not it was directed at you," up from 25 percent in 2016. It's not clear, however, whether this increase is due to an uptick in genuinely offensive statements or increasing student intolerance towards mild political disagreements. 

On the bright side, increasing numbers of students opposed instituting policies like restrictive speech codes or providing safe spaces. Since 2017, support for speech codes has declined 23 percentage points, and support for safe spaces declined 15 percentage points. Support for disinviting potentially offensive speakers stayed roughly the same since 2017, declining by just three percentage points, to 25 percent after a brief jump to 42 percent in 2019.

"American society continues to be at a crossroads over how to apply First Amendment rights in the 21st century, particularly on college campuses," the report reads. "That is why it is essential that thought leaders, administrators, professors, and the public listen to the voices of college students as they grapple with issues of free speech in America and on campus."

The post 70 Percent of College Students Say Speech Can Be as Damaging as Physical Violence appeared first on Reason.com.

Ever since Nintendo unveiled The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom yesterday, the community has been speculating about where this game sits in the series' timeline, discussing trailer details and, importantly, sharing fan art.

Echoes of Wisdom will be the first mainline Zelda game that features the titular princess in a playable role. Rather than a sword like Link, Zelda will make her way through Hyrule with a new item known as the Tri Rod, which allows her to copy and paste items she finds in the world. She can also pick up and throw rocks at enemies, and copy enemies to do battle for her.

But, where does Echoes of Wisdom fall in Zelda's expansive timeline? While there has been nothing definitive shared as yet (and, let's be honest, there likely never will be), there are some theories out there.

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The Nintendo Direct for June 2024 has been and gone! Sure we had to wait over a month (and were then only given 24 hours notice, classic Nintendo), but it was worth it. Well worth it subjectively, I'm sure there are some disappointment people out there. (Look, we'd all like to play Silksong. Hopefully it will be out next year. Or the year after that...) Anyways, in case you missed June 2024's Nintendo Direct or simply want to revisit the announcements - look no further as you'll find it all below.

The Nintendo Direct started in pure Nintendo fashion with Mario and Luigi Brothership. We got an excellent look at the cel-shaded style graphics, combat and all the platforming fun this game has in store for you.

Mario and Luigi will be released on the Nintendo Switch on 7th November 2024.

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I am trying to generate a set of points distributed in such a way as to give a "rough circle" sort of shape. The points should not deviate too far from neighboring points, with larger jumps being rarer, though the radius can gradually deviate from whatever the starting mean radius was. The angular seperation of the points are equally distributed, but the number of points can vary.

My first strategy was to do a random walk around the circle, with the next point having a radius that's different by a normally-distributed random number. The problem is once we get to the last point, it will more often than not have a big discontinuity with the first point, larger than what we would expect from the normal variation in neighboring points.

Now I don't need the last point to be exactly the same as the first, but I would like an approach that has the first and the last points to be as near as we would expect any other two adjacent points to be. Is there some way to pick random points in such a way, so that a random walk "returns to its starting position" so to speak?

For context, the use case is the creation of objects in an Asteroids (the arcade game) sort of style. Those asteroids simply used a uniformly distributed random radius for each point in the polygon, but that produces objects more jaggedy than what I would like, and lead to more visually spherical objects as you add more points. But my polygons still have few enough points where a full application of Perlin noise or some other fractal method would be overkill I would think.

New legislation would repeal parts of the Comstock Act, a Victorian-era law that's being revived to attack abortion pills.

Passed in 1873, the Comstock Act was a big deal in earlier eras, sending people to prison for publishing information about birth control, critiques of marriage, and more.

The law is vague and broad, banning the mailing of any "article, matter, thing, device, or substance" that the government deems "obscene, lewd, lascivious, indecent, filthy or vile," along with anything "designed, adapted, or intended for producing abortion, or for any indecent or immoral use." Essentially, the Comstock Act weaponizes the U.S. Postal Service to give the federal government an in against things that otherwise wouldn't be its business.

"Anthony Comstock, the law's namesake and an anti-smut crusader, lobbied for and personally enforced the law as a special agent of the U.S. Postal Service," noted the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) lawyer Robert Corn-Revere in a recent piece for Reason about efforts to posthumously pardon publisher D.M. Bennett. "Under the law's broad mandate, everything that Comstock considered immoral was by definition obscene and, therefore, illegal. Comstock's concept of immorality included blasphemy, sensational novels and news stories, art, and even scientific and medical texts." (You can read more about Comstock, "the prodigal censor," here.)

The Comstock Act lay dormant for a while, rendered toothless in part by court interpretations of the First Amendment that were more vigorously protective of free speech. But these days, activists and politicians opposed to abortion are trying to revive the law, seeing its potential usefulness in going after mifepristone and misoprostol, the two-pill regimen approved to end first-trimester pregnancies.

The resurgence of interest in the Comstock Act underscores the need to repeal bad laws, not simply assume them defanged by decades of latency.

The Biden administration certainly isn't going to start prosecuting people under the Comstock Act, but a more conservative future administration could. "[Donald] Trumps' [sic] advisors are…arguing that the Comstock Act is a de facto national abortion ban already on the books," says Madison Roberts, senior policy counsel at the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). "They are wrong. The Department of Justice has made clear and federal appeals courts have uniformly held for almost a century that the Comstock Act does not apply to legal abortion care. But anti-abortion extremists have manipulated the law to ban abortion before, and there's no reason to think they won't try it again."

Moreover, the law was cited in a legal challenge to abortion pills and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's decision to let them be sent via mail. The district judge who first heard the case (and sided with the plaintiffs) wrote that "dispensing of chemical abortion drugs through mail violates unambiguous federal criminal law." That case was shot down by the U.S. Supreme Court last week on procedural grounds, but it certainly won't be the last attempt to stop the prescription and mailing of abortion pills. Nor is it likely to be the last time Comstock is invoked for this purpose—unless the act is revised or repealed.

"It is too dangerous to leave this law on the books," Sen. Tina Smith (D–Minn.) said in a statement.

The Stop Comstock Act, which Smith is slated to introduce soon (no draft has been released yet, however), would repeal the parts of the law "that could be used by an anti-abortion administration to ban the mailing of mifepristone and other drugs used in medication abortions, instruments and equipment used in abortions, and educational material related to sexual health," per Smith's press release. A companion bill will be introduced in the House by Rep. Becca Balint (D–Vt.).

This is good, but not far enough, if it only partially repeals the law.

Why stop with repealing the parts that could be used to target abortion? The Comstock Act's reach is much more broad than that, and every bit could do some damage in the wrong hands.

Here's the full spate of things that the Comstock Act declares criminal to mail:

Every article or thing designed, adapted, or intended for producing abortion, or for any indecent or immoral use; and

Every article, instrument, substance, drug, medicine, or thing which is advertised or described in a manner calculated to lead another to use or apply it for producing abortion, or for any indecent or immoral purpose; and

Every written or printed card, letter, circular, book, pamphlet, advertisement, or notice of any kind giving information, directly or indirectly, where, or how, or from whom, or by what means any of such mentioned matters, articles, or things may be obtained or made, or where or by whom any act or operation of any kind for the procuring or producing of abortion will be done or performed, or how or by what means abortion may be produced, whether sealed or unsealed; and

Every paper, writing, advertisement, or representation that any article, instrument, substance, drug, medicine, or thing may, or can, be used or applied for producing abortion, or for any indecent or immoral purpose; and

Every description calculated to induce or incite a person to so use or apply any such article, instrument, substance, drug, medicine, or thing.

It's time to repeal the whole thing.

Today, it's only the abortion part of the law that people are trying to revive. But a few years ago, most of us weren't expecting a Comstock revival at all. Who's to say that a few years from now, people won't try to use it against all sorts of information, art, etc. that they don't like?

If we want to stop the Comstock Act from ever again being used to suppress speech, restrict access to contraceptives, punish people for homosexuality, and more, then we need to stop the Comstock Act entirely.

The post The Stop Comstock Act Doesn't Go Far Enough appeared first on Reason.com.

This month, the Supreme Court refused to consider a request by anti-abortion groups to impose nationwide restrictions on mifepristone, a safe medication used in most U.S. abortions and for miscarriage care. Without addressing whether mifepristone should be further restricted, the court found that these anti-abortion plaintiffs lack “legal standing” – meaning they do not have a sufficient connection to the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) regulation of mifepristone to be able to challenge the agency’s decisions in court.

The court’s decision is a relief, but we should not be dazzled by the fact that the justices did the right thing based purely on a legal technicality. While the Supreme Court refused to allow these particular anti-abortion groups to bring this case, extremist politicians have vowed to continue to use the courts and the law to strip away access to medication abortion nationwide. Below, we break down why this case matters, and what happens next.

The plaintiffs in Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine v. FDA are organizations and doctors who want to see all abortion banned nationwide. To further their agenda, they used junk science to target access to mifepristone, a medication used in most U.S. abortions. They filed this lawsuit in Amarillo, Texas, where they could guarantee it would be heard by a Trump-appointed district court judge with a record of hostility to abortion. That district judge rubber-stamped all of their requests, and the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals largely did the same – overriding the consensus of the FDA and every leading national medical authority in order to impose medically unnecessary restrictions on mifepristone.

In its decision, the Supreme Court did not address the plaintiffs’ arguments that mifepristone should be severely restricted. The court found that the lawsuit suffered from a critical defect: the anti-abortion groups and doctors who brought the case lack legal standing. As the court explained, these anti-abortion plaintiffs don’t prescribe mifepristone and have no actual connection to the FDA’s regulation of the drug. Instead, “the plaintiffs want [the] FDA to make mifepristone more difficult for other doctors to prescribe and for pregnant women to obtain.” But under the Constitution, “a plaintiff ’s desire to make a drug less available for others does not establish standing to sue.”

For now, the court’s decision preserves the state-level patchwork access to medication abortion that has existed since the Supreme Court overruled Roe v. Wade in 2022. That means that, for the time being, people across the United States can continue to fill their mifepristone prescriptions through mail-order and retail pharmacies, just as they would for any other similarly safe medication – without having to travel, sometimes hundreds of miles, just to pick up a pill. Health care professionals with specialized training, like nurse-practitioners, will also maintain the ability to prescribe mifepristone where state law allows. Furthermore, in the U.S. nearly 1 in 5 abortions relies on telemedicine. For many people – including low-income patients, people of color, folks in rural areas, and women in abusive households – retaining accessibility options, such as telemedicine, is essential – especially when it may be impossible to arrange and afford lengthy transportation and childcare, to secure time off work, or to escape the surveillance of an abuser in order to access time-sensitive care.

The court’s order also forestalls the dire consequences the American Cancer Society and many other patient advocacy groups warned of should the court override the FDA’s actions and undermine drug development and impede access to critical medications well beyond reproductive health care.

There is no credible dispute about mifepristone’s safety. The nation’s leading medical associations describe the science confirming its safety as “overwhelming.” While all drugs carry risks, medical experts have explained that mifepristone is among the safest medications used in medical practice today – safer than Viagra or penicillin – with serious complications experienced by fewer than 1 percent of patients.

By contrast, the plaintiffs’ evidence rested on testimony and research from a few anti-abortion doctors who travel the country peddling junk science about abortion safety. As the ACLU explained in a friend-of-the-court brief, when other courts have heard these folks testify, time and again, they have discredited them. For instance, Dr. Ingrid Skop – cited 17 times in the appellate court’s ruling– had her testimony on abortion thrown out by a Florida court two years ago for being “inaccurate.” Dr. Skop admitted under oath in 2020 that she is “not a really good researcher,” so it’s no surprise that her research on mifepristone was published by a fringe advocacy group known for promoting blatantly false conspiracy theories, such as that President Barack Obama hypnotized listeners with his speeches. Several of the studies relied on by these plaintiffs have been retracted because they are so profoundly flawed. Another study is based on 98 anonymous blogs.

Maintaining access to mifepristone has never been more crucial. Since it was approved in 2000, nearly 6 million people in the United States, and millions more globally, have used this medication. Today, medication abortion comprises almost two-thirds of all abortions in this country.

Play the video

The Supreme Court refused to allow these particular anti-abortion groups to bring this case, but extremist politicians are waiting in the wings to continue this campaign to strip away access to medication abortion nationwide. Indeed, the same Trump-appointed district judge in Texas has already permitted Idaho, Kansas, and Missouri to intervene in the district court proceedings on the same side as the anti-abortion groups. And these extremist politicians have said that they will try to continue this case in Texas – even though the Supreme Court just found that the original plaintiffs lack standing – or else bring copycat lawsuits in other jurisdictions.

Moreover, in the coming weeks, the Supreme Court will decide another abortion case that will determine whether politicians can force doctors to withhold emergency room care from their patients suffering severe pregnancy complications. These cases show how far politicians will go to prevent people from getting the reproductive health care they need.

Since Roe was overturned, every time an abortion issue has been put to the ballot, the people have voted in favor of access. Politicians are relentless in their attacks, but a majority of this country believes that people must have the power to make personal decisions during pregnancy. We’ll continue using every tool at our disposal to fight back against these cruel and deeply unpopular attacks on our health, our futures, and our bodily autonomy.

Join us in this fight to expand and restore our rights by urging legislators to pass federal legislation that safeguards our reproductive freedom – including abortion, birth control, AND IVF care.

As Donald Trump droned on at a Las Vegas rally over the weekend, his MAGA mob made a mad dash to the exit gates.

"Donald Trump is speaking right now, and all these people are leaving!" said Las Vegas radio host Brian Shapiro as he recorded bored-looking rally-goers pouring out of the venue. — Read the rest

The post Donald Trump is mid-speech when hundreds of bored rally-goers exit the gates (video) appeared first on Boing Boing.

The “one more thing” at the Xbox showcase during Summer Game Fest was a reveal trailer for Gears of War: E-Day, a prequel to the original Gears trilogy starring everyone’s favorite bros, Marcus Fenix and Dominic Santiago. Naturally, Gears fans (myself included) were very excited at the reveal, though it’s not clear…

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Gears of War: E-Day is the first entry in the franchise since 2020 and it’s a prequel telling the origins of Marcus and Dom—the main characters seen in the first three Gears games. For folks wanting a resolution to the big cliffhanger ending of Gears 5, it sounds like Xbox will get around to it...one day.

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For nearly a decade, the transit authority in Washington, D.C., has faced controversy over restrictive guidelines governing advertisements in the city's subways and busses. Now, it might have to scrap some of them.

The controversial rules prohibit any ad that is "issues-oriented" or "intended to influence members of the public regarding an issue on which there are varying opinions." The guidelines also single out religious ads, prohibiting "advertisements that promote or oppose any religion, religious practice or belief."

Last month, a D.C. district court ruled in favor of a Christian group seeking to challenge the rules, placing a preliminary injunction on part of the guidelines that ban ads "intended to influence members of the public regarding an issue on which there are varying opinions."

The Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA) first enacted the controversial rules after an anti-Islam activist attempted to buy an advertisement depicting Muhammad in 2015.

In 2017, the American Civil Liberties Union sued WMATA over the guidelines, joined by plaintiffs ranging from vegan group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) to right-wing provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos. That case is still ongoing. In 2018, however, a D.C. district court ruled against a request for a preliminary injunction against WMATA's rules.

But the ACLU has joined another lawsuit challenging the guidelines on First Amendment grounds—this time, to much better success. This latest lawsuit was filed in December 2023 by WallBuilders, an organization that aims to educate the public "concerning the Godly foundation of our country," according to legal records.

When WallBuilders attempted to purchase ads to go in WMATA busses, reading "Christian? To find out about the faith of our founders, go to wallbuilders.com." WMATA rejected the ads, citing their guidelines. When WallBuilders resubmitted the ads, omitting all text except "visit wallbuilders.com," they were still rejected.

WallBuilders sued. On May 21, Judge Beryl A. Howell of the District Court of D.C. granted WallBuilder's motion for a preliminary injunction, halting enforcement on the part of the guidelines that prohibited advertisements seeking "to influence members of the public regarding an issue on which there are varying opinions."

"WMATA is permitted to retain considerable discretion in evaluating the intent and purpose of an ad…but this discretion must be coupled with objective, workable standards," wrote Howell. "Put simply, the utterly undefined use of the phrase '[a]dvertisements intended to influence . . . regarding an issue on which there are varying opinions,' coupled with the lack of any definitions or official guidance and WMATA's inconsistent application of [the guideline], makes clear that [it] is not a reasonable restriction on speech."

The ruling is a major victory for a whole range of controversial groups who want to buy ads on D.C. buses and subways. It also sends a clear message to WMATA: While it can place some restrictions on the content of ads, its rules have to be well-defined and narrowly tailored. 

The post D.C.'s Rules for Subway Ads Are Blocked in Federal Court appeared first on Reason.com.

What do the National Rifle Association (NRA), the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), and nine U.S. Supreme Court justices from five presidential administrations all have in common? That list is likely relatively small. But at least one area of overlap was made evident Thursday when the Court published a unanimous ruling that a New York government official allegedly violated the First Amendment by pressuring insurers and banks to sever business ties with the NRA, which the ACLU is representing.

The decision resuscitates the gun advocacy group's lawsuit against Maria Vullo, the former head of New York's Department of Financial Services (DFS). The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit had previously ruled in her favor.

At the core of the case is Vullo's advocacy following the 2018 shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. After that tragedy, in private meetings with insurance companies, Vullo allegedly expressed she would selectively apply enforcement action to groups that insisted on serving the NRA.

She didn't stop there. She also sent letters titled "Guidance on Risk Management Relating to the NRA and Similar Gun Promotion Organizations" to insurers and banks, in which she encouraged them to "continue evaluating and managing their risks, including reputational risks, that may arise from their dealings with the NRA or similar gun promotion organizations"; to "review any relationships they have with the NRA or similar gun promotion organizations"; and to "take prompt actions to manag[e] these risks and promote public health and safety." And in a press release with then-Gov. Andrew Cuomo, the two officials urged such companies to terminate their relationships with the gun advocacy group. Some took them up on the suggestion.

The constitutional issue at stake here is similar to the one the Court explored in Murthy v. Missouri, the case that asks if President Joe Biden's administration violated the First Amendment when it sought to convince social media companies to remove content it disliked. During those oral arguments in March, many justices appeared sympathetic to the view that government officials had not overstepped the bounds of their authority and had merely exercised their own free speech rights to persuade those companies to adopt their views, not unlike a White House press secretary promoting an ideological slant to the media. 

But in NRA v. Vullo, the Court ruled unanimously that Vullo's actions as alleged by the NRA had crossed the line from persuasion into coercion. "Government officials cannot attempt to coerce private parties in order to punish or suppress views that the government disfavors," wrote Justice Sonia Sotomayor. The NRA, she said, "plausibly alleges that respondent Maria Vullo did just that."

The decision sends the case back to the 2nd Circuit, which could still give Vullo qualified immunity, the legal doctrine that shields government officials from suits like the NRA's if the misconduct alleged has not been "clearly established" in prior case law. That outcome is certainly probable, as the 2nd Circuit's original decision not only ruled that Vullo had not violated the Constitution—which the Supreme Court rejected today—but that even if she had, qualified immunity would insulate her from the NRA's claim.

It is difficult to imagine, however, a more obvious violation of the Constitution than the weaponization of government power to cripple advocacy disfavored by the state. The supposed reason for qualified immunity is that taxpayer-funded civil servants deserve fair notice that conduct is unlawful before a victim can seek recourse for those misdeeds. To argue that a government agent could not be expected to understand the contours of the First Amendment here is rather dire.

Many people may struggle to separate the constitutional question from the ideological backdrop. The NRA, after all, is one of the more polarizing lobbying organizations in the country, not least of which because its founding issue—gun rights—is not exactly a topic that elicits cool-headed responses. It has also become an advocacy group not just for firearms but for the Republican Party more broadly and the identity politics associated with it, alienating large swaths of people, to put it mildly.

There is another major group in the country that has followed a similar story arc, just on the other side of the political spectrum: the ACLU. Once a stalwart free speech group—so principled it defended the First Amendment rights of Nazis—it has, in modern times, sometimes actively advocated against civil liberties when those principles transgress progressive politics, an awkward move when considering the group's name. But no matter how much you dislike one or both of them, the NRA and the ACLU coming together here is all the more reflective of the fact that some things, like the First Amendment, really aren't partisan.

The post The NRA's Unanimous Supreme Court Victory Is Good for Free Speech—No Matter How You Feel About Guns appeared first on Reason.com.

On Tuesday, Harvard officials announced that the university would adopt a formal stance of ideological neutrality on political events and other controversial issues. The decision comes after months of tumultuous campus protests over the war between Israel and Hamas.

Earlier this month, a faculty-led working group published a report that strongly recommended adopting a neutral stance on topics that do not directly concern the university itself.

"The university has a responsibility to speak out to protect and promote its core function. Its leaders must communicate the value of the university's central activities. They must defend the university's autonomy and academic freedom when threatened," the report stated. "The university and its leaders should not, however, issue official statements about public matters that do not directly affect the university's core function."

The report hinted at what is likely the prevailing reason behind Harvard's push toward neutrality—the immense pressure faced by school officials to weigh in on Hamas' October 7 attack against Israel, and the ongoing war in Gaza. The report noted how, if officials make statements about one topic unrelated to the university's core function, the school opens itself up to demands it comment on every other controversy.

"If the university and its leaders become accustomed to issuing official statements about matters beyond the core function of the university, they will inevitably come under intense pressure to do so from multiple, competing sides on nearly every imaginable issue of the day," said the report. "This is the reality of contemporary public life in an era of social media and political polarization."

Survey results released last week by The Harvard Crimson indicate widespread faculty support for neutrality. The survey found that more than 70 percent of Arts and Sciences faculty supported a shift to formal neutrality and more than half reported feeling "somewhat negatively" or "negatively" about "the current state of academic freedom at Harvard"

The announcement was met with widespread praise from free expression advocates.

"For better or worse, what Harvard does, others follow," Angel Eduardo, senior writer and editor at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, wrote on Tuesday. "The principles outlined in the Institutional Voice Working Group's report don't just bode well for Harvard's future on free speech and academic freedom—they may also signal a significant sea change in colleges across the country."

On Wednesday, Syracuse University also announced that it would adopt the recommendations of a similar working group and take an official neutral stance.

"We embrace the guiding principle that the remedy for speech that some may find hurtful, offensive, or even hateful is not the disruption, obstruction, or suppression of the free speech of others, but rather more speech," a statement from the university reads. "Except under the most extraordinary circumstances and with the sole purpose of protecting its mission of discovery, improvement, and dissemination of knowledge, the University does not make institutional statements or pronouncements on current controversies."

The post Harvard Announces It Will Stop Releasing Political Statements appeared first on Reason.com.

America's most insane occupational licensing law is about to get a whole lot better.

Louisiana is the only state in the country that requires florists to be licensed by the government. A bill that is now on the way to Gov. Jeff Landry's desk sadly won't change that fact, but it will eliminate the mandatory test that prospective florists in Louisiana must pass before being allowed to earn a living by placing different types of flowers together in an arrangement. Going forward, obtaining a florist license will require only the payment of a fee to the state.

The bill cleared its final legislative hurdle with a unanimous vote in the state House on Wednesday. Landry, a Republican who has supported other licensing reforms, is expected to sign it.

Requiring any sort of government permission slip before someone can work as a florist is obviously ridiculous, and Louisiana's florist-testing regime was a uniquely perverse and protectionist scheme. This week's passage of state Rep. Mike Bayham's (R–Chalmette) reform bill is the culmination of a two-decade battle to eliminate it.

That effort began in the early 2000s, when the Institute for Justice filed a lawsuit challenging the florist licensing law. One of the plaintiffs in that case, a woman named Sandy Meadows, had been fired from her job at a Baton Rogue grocery store when state inspectors discovered she had been arranging flowers without the proper license. She tragically died, unemployed and in poverty, before the case could be heard.

Several subsequent lawsuits and legislative efforts have failed to kill the florist licensing law, although Louisiana lawmakers did adopt changes in 2012 that put an end to the practical portion of the licensing exam. Yes, before that, would-be florists were not only quizzed on their knowledge of the profession but also on their subjective skills at arranging flowers. The judges for the exam, naturally, were already-licensed florists.

Even after the exam was pared back to being only a written test, the requirements were still quite onerous, Sarah Harbison, general counsel for the Pelican Institute, a free market think tank that supported the reform bill, told Reason this week. The test would be offered only a few times a year, and would-be licensees had to travel to Baton Rouge to take it in person.

The arguments for maintaining the florist license strain credibility. During a Louisiana Senate hearing on the reform bill earlier this month, Agriculture Commissioner Mike Strain fretted about the risk of "pest and disease problems" if the licensing requirement was removed. Louisiana does not require a license to sell cut flowers—which would presumably carry the same, truly terrifying risks—but does require a license if you want to arrange different types of flowers into a bouquet. And if Louisiana is protecting the public from the danger of unlicensed floristry, why isn't there mass chaos in the 49 other states where florists can work without first passing a government-issued test?

"This will lead to greater sales of flowers. This will help people get jobs. This will expand opportunities for people to sell flowers, and this will get rid of a needless regulation," Bayham said last month when the House first approved his bill.

Good riddance to Louisiana's absurd florist licensing exams. But this week's reforms do leave one dilemma: What will be America's worst licensing law now?

The post Louisiana Finally Fixes America's Dumbest Licensing Requirement appeared first on Reason.com.

The live-action adaptation of The Legend of Zelda is being developed in "as closest possible collaboration" with the "true genius" of Nintendo's Shigeru Miyamoto.

In an interview with Deadline, as spotted by The Gamer, Sony Motion Pictures Group chair Tom Rothman stressed the importance of "big IP movies" for the company, asserting that "The Legend of Zelda is going to be huge for us".

"He’s a true genius in that world, and it’s really his strong vision that is motivating it," Rothman said of Miyamoto. "He created it and understands it thoroughly. You only [have] to look at the results of Super Mario Brothers to see.

Read more

Britain's signals intelligence spy chief raised eyebrows this week with warnings that Russia is coordinating both cyberattacks and physical acts of sabotage against the West. There's evidence to back her claims—and the West may be returning the favor. Coming soon after FBI Director Christopher Wray warned that China is targeting American infrastructure, it looks like the world is not only fracturing once again, but that the hostile blocs are engaged in covert warfare.

Rumors of War

"We are increasingly concerned about growing links between the Russian intelligence services and proxy groups to conduct cyberattacks as well as suspected physical surveillance and sabotage operations," Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) Director Anne Keast-Butler told an audience at the United Kingdom government-sponsored CyberUK 2024 conference. "Before, Russia simply created the right environments for these groups to operate, but now they are nurturing and inspiring these non-state cyber actors in some cases seemingly coordinating physical attacks against the West."

Keast-Butler, whose agency is comparable to the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA), also called out China, Iran, and North Korea as cybersecurity dangers. But naming Russian officials as being behind "physical attacks" raises the stakes. Sadly, her claims are well-founded.

Sabotage, Espionage, and Other Mischief

"A 20-year-old British man has been charged with masterminding an arson plot against a Ukrainian-linked target in London for the benefit of the Russian state," CBS News reported last month. That wasn't an isolated incident.

"In April alone a clutch of alleged pro-Russian saboteurs were detained across the continent," The Economist noted May 12 in describing what it called a "shadow war" between East and West. "Germany arrested two German-Russian dual nationals on suspicion of plotting attacks on American military facilities and other targets on behalf of the GRU, Russia's military intelligence agency. Poland arrested a man who was preparing to pass the GRU information on Rzeszow airport, the most important hub for military aid to Ukraine. Britain charged several men over an earlier arson attack in March on a Ukrainian-owned logistics firm in London whose Spanish depot was also targeted."

The GCHQ chief's warnings coupled with reality on the ground are alarming in themselves. Worse, they come after FBI Director Christopher Wray issued similar cautions in April about China.

"The PRC [People's Republic of China] has made it clear that it considers every sector that makes our society run as fair game in its bid to dominate on the world stage, and that its plan is to land low blows against civilian infrastructure to try to induce panic and break America's will to resist," Wray told the Vanderbilt Summit on Modern Conflict and Emerging Threats in Nashville, Tennessee.

Wray clarified that, by "infrastructure," he meant "everything from water treatment facilities and energy grids to transportation and information technology."

If that doesn't make you want to check that your pantry is stocked and that the water filter and generator are in working order, nothing will.

A Game Both Sides Can Play

Of course, in war of any sort, the implication is that both sides are involved in conflict. Western intelligence officials are loud in their warnings about foreign threats, but less open regarding just what their own operatives might be doing in Russia, China, and elsewhere. Still, there's evidence that this is hardly a one-sided war, shadowy though it may be.

In June 2022, The New York Times reported that Ukraine's defensive efforts relied heavily on "a stealthy network of commandos and spies rushing to provide weapons, intelligence and training." In addition to Americans, the story noted, "commandos from other NATO countries, including Britain, France, Canada and Lithuania, also have been working inside Ukraine."

American journalist and combat veteran Jack Murphy goes further, claiming the CIA, working through an allied spy service "is responsible for many of the unexplained explosions and other mishaps that have befallen the Russian military industrial complex." The targets include "railway bridges, fuel depots and power plants," he adds.

And if you wonder who blew up Nord Stream 1 and 2, well, so do a lot of people. Russia was initially accused, but it didn't make a lot of sense for the country's forces to destroy pipelines that generated revenue and fed western dependence on Russian natural gas. Since then, Denmark and Sweden have closed inconclusive investigations, journalist Seymour Hersh blamed American officials, and a report by Der Spiegel and The Washington Post placed responsibility on a rogue Ukrainian military officer.

The Wider War Is Here

Taken all together, the warnings from Keast-Butler and Wray, as well as acts of sabotage and arrests of foreign agents suggest that fears of a wider war resulting from Russia's continuing invasion of Ukraine may miss the point; the war could already be here. People looking for tanks and troops are overlooking cyber intrusions, arson, bombings, and other low-level mayhem.

"Russia is definitely at war with the West," Oleksandr Danylyuk of the Royal United Services Institute, a British defense and security think tank, told NBC News earlier this week.

Russian officials seem to embrace that understanding, with Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov commenting in March that the invasion of Ukraine, originally referred to by the euphemism "special military operation," is now more serious. "It has become a war for us as the collective West more and more directly increases its level of involvement in the conflict," he said.

Fortunately, a shadow war of the sort around us is less destructive than open military conflict, especially when the hostilities involve nuclear-armed powers. It's far better that spies hack the email accounts of government officials, as happened in the case of a Russian cyberattack on Germany's ruling Social Democrats, than that cities burn. But civilians still must live with the consequences of combatants attempting to do each other harm—particularly when the harm is to infrastructure on which regular people rely.

So, welcome to the world of global shadow war. Try to not become collateral damage.

The post World War War III May Already Have Started—in the Shadows appeared first on Reason.com.

After spending a while in Early Access on Steam, Fabledom has launched its 1.0 version, offering a fairy tale inspired city builder to players who might have had their fill of the grittier form of the genre seen in the recent Manor Lords or upcoming Frostpunk 2. Unlike those games, Fabledom looks to sources of inspiration like the fantasy tinged The Settlers or, more recently, Against the Storm, combining these influences with a bubbly cartoon aesthetic. Its execution of this premise seems to be working, with positive reviews and a healthy player base forming around the game in the days since its 1.0 launch on Steam.

Nintendo expects Switch to sell another 13.5m units during the coming financial year - enough that it will overtake Nintendo DS to become the company's best-selling platform. In total, Switch is now on 141.32m units sold.

In financial results published today - alongside which Nintendo mentioned Switch 2 for the first time - Nintendo forecast enough Switch 1 sales to take the aging console to 154.82m sold.

As a reminder, Nintendo DS finished its sales run on 154.02m. PlayStation 2, the best-selling video game platform of all time, sold 160m.

Read more

Nintendo expects Switch to sell another 13.5m units during the coming financial year - enough that it will overtake Nintendo DS to become the company's best-selling platform. In total, Switch is now on 141.32m units sold.

In financial results published today - alongside which Nintendo mentioned Switch 2 for the first time - Nintendo forecast enough Switch 1 sales to take the aging console to 154.82m sold.

As a reminder, Nintendo DS finished its sales run on 154.02m. PlayStation 2, the best-selling video game platform of all time, sold 160m.

Read more

I need to generate discrete integer variables that each have meaning, so does their sum. I am essentially looking to partition a normal distribution into n bins. You can think of them as stats. The total obviously matters, but if we always equally distribute them, an item with higher total stats would be strictly better than one with lower total. We can't have that. Therefore, I had the idea to "reward" the player with bigger variation if the generated sum is low. I just do not know how to achieve this.

Generating a total value from a normal distribution is easy. However, I don't know how to distribute them in the way I described. Below are methods I have tried:

1. Start with an equal partition, for a random number of steps, increase a random stat by 1 and decrease another by 1. Problem: the values always seem to be stuck near the beginning.

2. Start with an equal partition that is higher than the desired average. For a random number of steps, increase a random stat by 1 an decrease all others by 1. Problem: this seems to just universally lower all the stats without producing the variation I wanted. The sum total is also not normally distributed.

3. Randomly generate the first (n-1) variables from normal distributions, and fix the last one. Problem: this produces very predictable results. Each sample looks more or less the same.

Is there an algorithm that achieves this except just to generate many samples until it has the desired distribution?

Nintendo expects Switch to sell another 13.5m units during the coming financial year - enough that it will overtake Nintendo DS to become the company's best-selling platform. In total, Switch is now on 141.32m units sold.

In financial results published today - alongside which Nintendo mentioned Switch 2 for the first time - Nintendo forecast enough Switch 1 sales to take the aging console to 154.82m sold.

As a reminder, Nintendo DS finished its sales run on 154.02m. PlayStation 2, the best-selling video game platform of all time, sold 160m.

Read more

America's tax code is notoriously convoluted, but the complexity really sparkles when it comes to the federal government's approach to alcohol taxation. Wine, beer, and liquor are all subject to varying tax rates based on intricate calculations, but the so-called "bubble tax" for hard cider is the star of this regulatory circus.

Unbeknownst to most Americans, the tax rate for alcoholic cider is based on, among other things, the amount of carbonation the drink contains. Yes, America technically already has a carbon tax and the feds have literally found a way to tax air. Craft cider makers are being flattened by an arbitrary system that is strangling the industry's long-term potential.

Under the federal code, alcoholic cider is taxed as either hard cider, still wine, or sparkling wine, and the implications of which category applies are not insignificant. Hard cider is taxed at a modest $0.226 per gallon, while sparkling wine is taxed at a whopping $3.40 per gallon—a staggering 1,400 percent increase. For every 100 gallons of cider produced, Uncle Sam either takes $22 in taxes or $340 in taxes. 

What determines how cider is categorized and taxed? A ridiculous three-part formula based on a) what type of fruit is used to make the cider, b) the alcohol content of the cider, and c) what carbonation level the cider contains. 

Imagine you're a cider maker aiming for the lower tax rate to apply to your product. You need to produce a cider that is made from apples or pears (with no other fruit additions), is less than 8.5 percent alcohol by volume (ABV), and has less than or equal to 0.64 grams of carbon dioxide (CO2) per 100mL. However, if you decide to add some blackberries or grapes, it's considered a still wine and taxed at $1.07 per gallon—but only if it has less than 0.392 grams of CO2 per 100mL. If you go over that carbonation threshold, you've unlocked sparkling wine status and with that the $3.40 per gallon tax rate.

Confused? It gets worse. 

If your pear or apple cider is over 0.64 grams of CO2, it gets the sparkling wine rate. But it's knocked back down to the still wine rate if it's less than 0.392 grams of CO2 and the ABV level is 8.5 percent or higher. Whether the bubbles are added via "force carbonated" or "bottle conditioned" carbonation creates another tax delineation for the sparkling wine category. A flow chart is needed just to unpack all the potential permutations and combinations:

The implications of this tax labyrinth extend to consumers. A report from Wine Enthusiast notes that modern drinkers have grown to expect beer-like carbonation levels in their alcoholic beverages, thereby creating pressure for cider makers to add more carbonation to their products. 

One cider maker from Oregon reported that he receives frequent emails from consumers complaining about flat cider, which they incorrectly blame on him rather than the government. If adding more carbonation could financially cripple a small business, it's little wonder many cider makers feel that their hands are tied. 

The disparity is glaring when compared to beverages like beer, hard seltzer, and regular soda, which face no such carbonation-based tax penalties. It's a clear disconnect from market realities and consumer demands, which increasingly favor diverse flavors and more carbonation in ciders.

Craft cider makers are doing their best to diversify the carbonation levels and fruits in their ciders to respond to consumer demand, but it's clear the industry has a hard ceiling on its growth due to these tax rules. This is why many cider makers state that their ability to expand—and the ability of the industry as a whole to thrive—is being pointlessly inhibited.

The bubble tax is now getting more attention due to a recent bipartisan bill introduced in Congress, which aims to level the playing field between apple and pear ciders and those made with other fruits. While promising, the best reform would be to convert the entire system of alcohol taxation to one based simply on a drink's ABV level rather than arbitrary classifications.

Craft cider, a beverage steeped in American history, deserves better. Another Michigan cider maker made it even simpler: "It's not expressing the free market. The government needs to get out of the way."

The post The Federal Government is Literally Taxing Air appeared first on Reason.com.

Nejnovější placené DLC pro hru Remnant 2 od společnosti Gunfire Games je nyní k dispozici. The Forgotten Kingdom, ve kterém hráči prozkoumávají nový biom v Yaeshe.

Níže se podívejte na úvodní trailer, který přibližuje nové prostředí a nepřátele.

Příběh se točí kolem kamenného ducha Lydusy, který není příliš šťastný a se svými konstrukty rozsévá zlo. Samozřejmě jsou tu i další protivníci, jako například obří konstrukce podobná hrnci s rotujícími vrstvami a kamennými úponky nebo rozkládající se kamenný bojovník, který používá led. Hráči budou mít k dispozici nové zbraně a archetyp Invoker, který jim pomůže.

Ten hráčům umožňuje nasměrovat přírodní duchy Yaesha a získat tak různé výhody. Kromě toho, že poskytuje dvě nálože pro dovednosti a snižuje celkový cooldown dovedností, můžete vysílat přílivové vlny, které zpomalují protivníky, kořeny, které způsobují mrákotu a časem léčí spojence, a mnoho dalšího. Mělo by být zajímavé sledovat, jak bude spolupracovat s ostatními archetypy, zejména s Ritualistou z The Awakened King.

Remnant 2: The Forgotten Kingdom je k dispozici za 9,99 dolarů samostatně a v rámci balíčku DLC za 24,99 dolarů na konzolích Xbox Series X/S, PS5 a PC.

Článek Remnant 2: The Forgotten Kingdom je nyní k dispozici se nejdříve objevil na GAME PRESS.

On Wednesday, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) signed a bill banning the sale or production of lab-grown meat in the state. While a press release framed the bill as an attempt to advance Floridans' freedom by protecting them from the "World Economic Forum's goal of forcing the world to eat lab-grown meat and insects," all the legislation really does is stile competition for the state's meat producers. 

"Today, Florida is fighting back against the global elite's plan to force the world to eat meat grown in a petri dish or bugs to achieve their authoritarian goals," DeSantis said in a Wednesday press release. "Our administration will continue to focus on investing in our local farmers and ranchers, and we will save our beef."

Cultivated, or "lab-grown," meat has been available in the United States on an extremely limited basis, generally limited to individual restaurants, since last year, after the Food and Drug Administration approved two different kinds of cultivated chicken for sale.

However, despite DeSantis' supposed fears about a lab-grown meat takeover, the small cultivated meat industry is struggling. The product isn't currently available anywhere in the United States, let alone in Florida.

Nonetheless, the governor signed Senate Bill 1084, which enacts a wide-ranging ban on cultivated meat, making it illegal "for any person to manufacture for sale, sell, hold or offer for sale, or distribute cultivated meat in" Florida. Violators of the law face misdemeanor penalties, and businesses caught selling the product could have their licenses suspended.

"We must protect our incredible farmers and the integrity of American agriculture," Florida Commissioner of Agriculture Wilton Simpson said in the press release. "Lab-grown meat is a disgraceful attempt to undermine our proud traditions and prosperity, and is in direct opposition to authentic agriculture."

However, it seems DeSantis is the real authoritarian in this situation. Instead of letting Floridians decide for themselves whether they want to try lab-grown meat, DeSantis is having the state step in, all in the name of protecting Floridians from an imaginary threat to their freedom.

Florida's lab-grown meat ban is a perfect marriage of protectionism and the culture war. By framing the tiny lab-grown meat industry as a left-wing threat, DeSantis can justify giving government kickbacks to the meat industry, all while protecting meat producers from a source of future competition. Wednesday's press release goes so far as to brag about a litany of recently passed legislation that "support[s] the state's agriculture and meat industry."

Unfortunately, Florida isn't the first state to ban cultivated meat. Alabama passed a ban on lab-grown meat last month, and legislation to ban the product is pending in Arizona and Tennessee. Italy banned it last year.

The post DeSantis Signs Bill Banning Lab-Grown Meat in Florida appeared first on Reason.com.

There may not be a more apt visual metaphor for Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis' past few years than his opposition to a proposed marijuana legalization ballot initiative—which he announced Tuesday while literally standing behind a sign celebrating "Freedom Month."

"I don't want this state to be reeking of marijuana," DeSantis said, defaulting to one of the laziest arguments against pot freedom, but one that DeSantis has been using for years. "We're doing fine. We don't need to do that."

How's that for Freedom Month?

In fairness to DeSantis, the jarringly dissonant signage was celebrating the state's sales tax holiday during May. Even so, the gap between DeSantis' pro-freedom messaging and his actions as governor has become a recurring theme for the one-time presidential hopeful.

After all, this is the same guy who wrote a book titled The Courage To Be Free, but has made a name for himself in conservative politics by wielding state power against drag queens, student groups, and others who have had the courage to freely express their opinions. On the presidential campaign trail, DeSantis would talk up the importance of school choice and parental rights, then moments later promise stricter state control over school curriculums. He's championed Florida's status as a refuge for Americans fleeing poor government policies in other states, even as he's tried to boot out migrants who are voting with their feet by coming to America for the same reason.

Freedom, for DeSantis, seems to mean that you can do whatever you'd please—but only if he approves.

It's disappointing, but hardly surprising, that DeSantis is applying that same logic to marijuana legalization. Florida residents might get a chance to vote on legalizing recreational weed in November, but DeSantis promised Tuesday that he would be "getting involved in different ways" to combat that ballot initiative. It's unclear exactly what DeSantis means, but State Attorney General Ashley Moody and some anti-legalization groups have already sued in state court to block the initiative from getting on the ballot.

The ballot initiative, Florida Amendment 3, would change the state's constitution to allow adults aged 21 and older to possess up to three ounces of marijuana. Existing licensed medical marijuana distribution centers—Florida voters approved medical marijuana in 2016—would be the only places allowed to distribute recreational weed, although state lawmakers could pass new laws to allow for commercial distribution and home growing.

As Marijuana Moment notes, economic analyses of the ballot initiative show that legalization would be a boon for Florida and could generate between $195.6 million and $431.3 million in new sales tax revenue annually.

Greater freedom for Floridians and higher tax revenue seem to matter less to DeSantis than the possibility that some of the state's residents might dislike the smell of reefer. "You want to walk down the street here and smell it," he asked, rhetorically, on Tuesday. "Do you want to not be able to take your family out to dinner because you're worried about it?"

If that's the best argument that the opponents of legalization in Florida can muster, there might be little cause for concern. Even so, having the (admittedly quite popular) governor campaigning against legalization figures to be a factor in the election.

Voters seem to be split on the legalization issue: A poll taken last month by USA Today and Ipsos showed 49 percent of Floridians support the ballot initiative—including 38 percent of registered Republicans. That's well short of the 60 percent threshold required for the amendment to pass.

What DeSantis does as Florida's governor will continue to carry national implications, not solely because he remains one of the most well-known Republican politicians in the country. He's reportedly seeking to patch up his relationship with former President Donald Trump—the two had dinner this week, according to The Washington Post—and may have a role to play in a future Trump administration, or as a Republican presidential candidate in 2028.

By then, maybe he'll have gotten over his fear of the smell of weed.

The post DeSantis Frets About Florida 'Reeking of Marijuana,' Says He'll Oppose Legalization appeared first on Reason.com.

Fabledom somehow passed me by, but darn if it isn't leaving early access in about a week and a half. May 13th (unlucky for some) will see this fairytale kingdom city builder launch into 1.0, after a comparatively short but successful early access run on Steam. It looks very sweet, and reminds me of a kind of Foundation meets Lakeburg Legacies - at least based on the trailer, which puts an emphasis on it laid back and idyllic citybuilding, and love.

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