Women may not not be a mathematical minority, but they absolutely are a cultural/societal minoritiy.

Cultural minorities have nothing to do with the absolute number of members the group has, but how much political and social power and influence the group holds.

That’s why black africans during apartheid Africa would still be considered minorities, even though they made up the mathematical majority of inhabitants.

Reminds of the old pile of gold (empty) meme

I mean that is kinda exactly what the developers want to provoke with timed dialogue choices. Timed dialogue choices are a game design mechanic to try and get a player to answer on instinct/gut feeling, rather than over analysing and trying to optimise the dialogue.

You not getting to think about it long is very much the intended effect, and allowing a pause would entirely defeat it.

There are of course definite accessibility concerns that should be considered and worked around, such as people with dyslexia who may not be able to properly parse the dialogue options before the timer runs out, but as a game mechanic I think forcing the player to pick on instinct definitely has merit. It helps make the game more immersive, because it puts you under the same pressure to react as your character is in the story right now, and it can lead to more interesting and ultimately enjoyable games by forcing players to potentially make a mistake, and having to find out a way to deal with the fallout.

Games that don’t allow you to pause and skip cutscenes.

I don’t want to have to miss half of the cutscenes just because someone interrupted me or the phone rang or something half way through. Alternatively, when I’m on my 23rd replay of a game, I do not want to have to sit through every cutscenes I already know by heart.

Oh, and modern games that allow manual saving at any time, not having any kind of regular auto save (looking at you here BG3).

If you’re fine from a gameplay pov with having the player save whenever, then there’s really no good reason whatsoever to not have one or two auto save slots that get saved every 10-20 minutes or so, at least as an option in the menu. ESPECIALLY in open world games (like BG3…) where you can easily go literal hours at a time without hitting a checkpoint save. And yes, I am still salty over learning about BG3’s lack of regular auto save when I lost like 2.5 hours of progress on my first run.

Fun fact, basic ethanol works excellent as a fuel additive to reduce knocking, but because it’s already a well known compound, fuel companies couldn’t patent it as an additive, that’s why they invented leaded petrol instead, so they could patent it.

(E: For full completeness, it should probably also be noted that potential legal difficulties surrounding reliably obtaining or producing industrial quantities of Ethanol alcohol in prohibition era America probably also played some role, but the patent thing was definitely the main reason)

That’s pretty much universally the view on freedom and rights that today’s neo conservatives have.

They cry states rights and freedom when someone else wants to ban them from doing anything at all, but the instant someone else is doing something they don’t like, they suddenly make up moral panics to justify federally banning those things.

That is to say, conservatives by and large don’t have any principles beyond being selfish and hateful towards minoritied. Everything else, including fundamental freedoms and human rights is negotiable so long as it doesn’t negatively affect them OR negatively affects the people they hate more than them. They just use terms like freedom or rights to virtue signal when it suits them, but are just as happy to drop the pretence the millisecond doing so becomes beneficial to their goals.

A good example is the free speech screeching of conservatives in the heyday of fact checking, Vs. Their tortured justifications and dismissals of Trump’s blatant attacks on free speech and press today.

Or alternatively, many TERFs and their open willingness to draw support, and work together with misogynistic conservative groups and even straight up open Neo Nazis, just because those groups also hate trans people, all whilst turning around and claiming with a straight face that they’re doing this for women.

The quote in the original french version is, at least iirc, let them eat brioche, so cake isn’t even a good translation. More something like “let them eat sweet bread”.

But translating brioche as cake instead makes the quote sound even more tone deaf and outrageous.

The ISS orbits at about 400km, or about 250 miles.

“Thousands of miles” away from earth’s surface would be further than any astronaut, except for the ones on Apollo 8, and 10-17, have ever been.

Did the north not decide to abolish slavery federally until after war was already over? Because surely otherwise, the south would have fought for both of these things.

In general it can be said that poor people do not have the capital to make upfront investments which become profitable over time. Not even just literal investing, but investing in things like a more fuel efficient car, upgrading the insulation in your house/apartment to save on heating, buying non-perishables in bulk when there’s a good deal, buying a dish washer instead of hand washing…

So many things that let you save tons of money in the long run, require relatively large upfront investments, that poor people can’t afford. That’s a big reason why poverty can be such an insidious vicious loop, that can be extremely hard to escape from.

Two identical households, with identical income could have vastly different financial situations, just based on if their income was previously low, and they weren’t able to afford any of these investments, vs. If their income was previously high, having allowed them to previously make these large investments to reduce their long term monthly costs, and secure enough liquidity to be able to continue occasionally making these investments.

I think the primary distinction is that a weapon in a criminal context is typically something that is used to threaten/coerce someone, or to enable you to cause (more/more severe) physical harm/incapacitation in a physical altercation.

Date rape drugs aren’t used to threaten/coerce people, and whilst they can cause harm, it is generally not the intended goal when someone uses them. And intent/willingness to use a weapon to physically harm someone, in my opinion, is a relevant distinction to relatively “”“peacefully”“” knocking someone out. Of course committing date rape is still an utterly horrific thing, and people who do it should be charged and held accountable to the fullest extent of justice, but it is still different from threatening someone with a weapon and forcing yourself on them. (Also, whilst I have no actual data on this, it seems logical to me that a conscious victim is far more likely to receive (more serious) injuries as they struggle, vs. an unconscious one)

So whilst I agree that classifying date rape drugs as weapons is a good move, there definitely are relevant distinctions as to why drugs are typically not considered weapons.