PlzGivHugs @ PlzGivHugs @sh.itjust.works

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2 yr. ago

I mean, at least in this summary (the article is pay-gated) it sounds like his point is valid. The line, "The fact that he was a soldier does not mean that he was a Nazi.", seems suspect, but I assume by "Nazi" he means the ideology or the political party directly, which could be true. Again, working purely off the summary. As Himka stated, those in Ukranian divisions may have been motivated to volunteer by fear of continued Soviet atrocities after witnessing the Holodomor and other crimes against humanity, or by vengence for these crimes.

If Yaroslav Hunka did join for these reasons, I think the matter is a lot more grey. If you watched your family and friends die to a violent, genocidal government, its not weird that you might be willing to work with another if you think they're a less immediately dangerous. Of course, if thats not the case, or he did support the Nazi party, the ideology, or if he was involved in any of the division's war crimes, then all of this is out the window and he deserves to be punished to the full extent of the law. My point is that he should be proven guilty before being counted as a supporter of the Nazi ideology, and there is still room for error currently (unless there's social media posts or other evidence I don't know of).

Edit: And just to be extra clear in case it wasn't obvious, I think supporters of the Nazi ideology, its modern incarnations, facists, and racists are all terrible. I think anyone who supports these belefs should be denounced and avoided. I just also believe that it is important to be certain of the accusation of something so awful before condeming someone for them.

Everything stops after that right? There can be no saving grace for someone who was in the SS.

There are some rare cases where where individuals would breifly join SS divisions, specifically to fight the Soviets rather than due to alligence to the Nazi ideology. Larry Throne is a notable example. The First Galician seems to have had a significant number focused on fighting the Soviets in a similar matter, although elements of the division did commit atrocities in Poland. Canada's 1986 investigation into the division after the war concluded that there wasn't sufficient evidence to condem the whole group

Of course, "not found guilty" doesn't mean innocent. My point is purely addressing the, "There can be no saving grace for someone who was in the SS." I still think this is a ridiculous situation, that he should not have been invited unless they can confirm with great certainty that he was not a supporter of the Nazi ideology and did not commit any crimes. If they can't even check what division he served in, clearly anything more is outside their ability. Hopefully he is investigated properly given the spotlight, and extradited if needed.

Edit: Worth noting that this was a Ukranian division after the Holodomor. Its no wonder that many would be willing to join a war against the country that had murdered millions of their people already. For scale, its estimated that the Holodomor killed 3-5 times as many as the holocost in Ukrane.

He was a volenteer of the Waffen-SS, 1st Galician. That particular division seems to have been unusually civil by Nazi standards, and were limitted to mostly fighting the Soviets. There are some reports of them being involved in the murder of polish civilians, and certainly many individuals in the division committed war crimes, but there doesn't seem to be significant enough evidence to condem the whole division. The Nuremberg Trials didn't specificly find the division guilty, and neither did later Canadian investigations.

I think this falls into a bit of a grey area, since there is the possibly that this individual was someone who specifically wantted to fight the Soviets in the same vein as Larry Thorne. At the same time, volentarily joining the Waffen-SS is inherently a pretty massive red flag. At the very least, not realizing you're inviting a former Waffen-SS member to speak is an stupid mistake and a PR nightmare.

Even for renters, this isn't a particularly large change, and there doesn't seem to be much thought in terms of what happens to the property if its converted after the fact.

I don't know about your location specifically or the specific age range you're refering to, but at least where I am, school/college tends to start at like 8:00 am, and most students want to or need to work fairly busy jobs given the ongoing cost of living crisis. Considering that, it means they can't stay up late, and don't have much energy to socialize compared to older generations. Although again, this varys by area and individual.

I don't have any recommendations, but I've run into this too.

These aren't mobile games, they're desktop games, and this isn't anything new. These same themes and effects have been used for decades. As someone else points out, even the retro Mario games have you use spinners and slot machines. RNG is exciting and helps make a fun and engaging game. I mean, by that same logic, a game like Catan should be banned because one of its primary mechanics is just being rewarded for favorable dice rolls, as you would be when gambling on dice.

What about Vampire Survivors, as well as numerous other games, using spinners or other slot-machine-like animations to represent RPG drops? Should all of these games be banned for the same reason? If anything, many of these better re-create the slot machine experience with their flashy effects and more substantial results.

I mean, personally I've pretty much given up on federated reddit alternatives because they lack both fucntionality (IE, searchability and decent sorting algorithms) and the content. The War Thunder community on Lemmy for example, hasn't had a new post in nearly a month despite a large ongoing event in the game. Considering the state of the official forums, the subreddit is the only place to get content related to the game.

Probably my proudest is Crypt of the Necrodancer's Vow Down. The game is already very difficult, but Vow Down requires beating the game in all-zones mode (rogue-like mode rather than the rogue-lite campaign) with one of the more difficult new-game+ characters, Monk. The basic game is a turn-based, grid-based RPG, with the gimmick being that you have to preform all actions to the beat, while the monsters have their turn between beats. Vow Down adds the catch that any gold, be it dropped by monsters or found in the world, kills you instantly and ends your run. Even ignoring the inherant urge to pick up dropped loot, this means you have to carefully position enemies as you kill them so as not to box yourself in with deadly loot, all while only having a fraction of a second to think per turn.

This game also has what is probably among the most difficult (while still being fair) achivememts on Steam: Beating the game with the final New Game+ character, Coda, which has the debuffs of every other character combined. According to Steam, 0.3% of players have this achivement, meaning roughly 0.3% of players have cheated in achievements.

I think the main difference is that in CSGO (and Dota) cosmetics sold directly by Valve in the game can be regulated to follow the law in all countries its available in (IE, the changes made for France in these games). Valve does not have as much control over 3rd party servers and sites. If its entirely separate like more CS gambling sites, they can (and do) just distance themselves from it and ignore it in all but the most extreme cases. On servers and custom games though, its accessed directly through their game, which is why I can see them being more strict with it.

They're not really getting much of a cut like this though. It might drive some players back towards the official store but I doubt the small amount of money there is even remotely worth it. I kinda wonder if there's a legal reason for this, such as needing to legally regulate transactions and gambling within their game. As is, I know some custom servers have lootboxes, for example, which could get Valve in trouble. Otherwise, it seems very out of character for the company that has previously tried to endorse paid mods (albiet in a way that gives themselves a direct cut) and is normally very laissez-faire.