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[MrRoboto75]

Civics classes basically teach how the government works in an idealized world where it's by-the-constitution and corruption by lobby barely exists.

It wouldn't make people actually vote any better.

[Starver]

That's just because the classes aren't good enough/haven't improved things enough yet!

(I said I didn't know much about them, apart from their existence.)

Spoiler: Though a semi-personal anecdote... (click to show/hide)

In advance, or possibly in the aftermath, of some General Election over here, a friend of mine (whose personal politics I almost entirely disagree with, but that's by-the-by) told me that his son's class was asked "How are your parents voting?" (or else "How did they vote?") by a teacher in some I-don't-know-what-reason classroom discussion on politics.

The honest, knowledgable and true answer apparently got ridiculed in front of all the others as it involved a particularly 'unpopular populist' party by the standards of the room and/or tutor.

And (if the tale passed to me is itself not distorted by the retelling of either/both the intermediaries involved), that's not right, in so many ways. Even if I'd also rather that the friend (and, by now, his offspring) not support the party/general-slant-of-party that I'm fairly certain they vote for. Or, in one definite case, has actually stood as a candidate for.

But that's probably not even involving a Civics Class at all. Either an idle form-room chat while waiting for the bell to move on to the first class of the day (whatever the system might have been) or something even more transient that wasn't even what I'm saying it shouldn't have been, and still shouldn't happen even if it's just a theoretical problem not ne that happened.

If the class can properly teach how everyone can register to vote (or keep registered), like getting everyone on the ladder to obtaining a learner's licence (that's right?) in the case of Drivers' Ed, then surely that helps. I'd hope there's a good non-partisan mix of how the whole system works/tries-to-work, with "how to avoid disenfranchisement" information (whether or not disanfranchisement is partisan itself), but know well enough not to pin my hopes on any of that.

(Also, I don't think this is actually a controversial idea, except by the kinds of people who really like to disproportionately disenfranchise others. Sorry to get all boringly standard in this thread.)

[LordBaal]

Quick starver, add some abortion and some 5g vaccines theory in your post to make it controversial before you get thrown out of the thread!

[Laterigrade]

Quick starver, add some abortion and some 5g vaccines theory in your post to make it controversial before you get thrown out of the thread!

Maybe throw in something about gender, just to make sure.

[dragdeler]

a

[martinuzz]

They are not sending their best.

This. I wanted to say "that behaviour is in no way representative for the average dutch person", but heh, we seem to have sadly bred a subculture of rowdy savages.
Not just white trash, it's morroccan trash, turkish trash and black carribean trash too, it's a subculture based on social demographic rather than race, and they are overrepresented amongst dutch tourists /expats in Europe, making us look bad indeed.
They randomly kill people in Spain (the victim happened to be dutch too), they destroy fountains and put people in hospital in Italy, and they are rude to you in Belgium.

(Laat ik het de "ik-doe-wat-ik-wil-schijt-aan-de-rest-cultuur noemen)

[dragdeler]

a

[feelotraveller]

But you were supposed to disagree according to thread etiquette bro

Yeah, I wanted to see blood.  Or at least a quick ten day campaign or something.

[Starver]

Belgium... now, that's a special case. Walloon and Flemish problems.  (Three countries in one. The Dutch part, the French part and the very very very small bit which at least tries to act entirely impartially when they want to.)

A French speaker can get short-shrift for trying to speak French in the non-Francophone bit. The person can pretend not to understand. Until it's picked up that it's an actual French interlocutor, then they'll happily parler entirely fluently and pleasantly. (As a bad French speaker, it might be even better for me. Hopefully they'll switch to English. Ich ne hablo pas sua lingvon, guv!)




I have absolutely no idea about the rest of the issues. It sounds like yet another layer of culture.

[Laterigrade]

There is no particular reason for all this Elden Ring hype.
A necromantical unpopular take.

[hector13]

I have been avoiding it.

I am assuming it is either a bog standard open-world action-RPG, or a soulsborne?

[Laterigrade]

From what I’ve gathered, it’s an open-world-ier soulsborne game, far more souls than borne, haha.

I’m just wondering why you’d want this extremely pricy new game and not play the previous, much-cheaper games, that are… the same thing. Have all the people buying it, despite reports of lag and poor performance, played the other souls games, or sekiro, all of which are cheaper and more available?

Not to say it’s a bad game, and to call it ‘exactly the same as other soulsborne games’ is surely wrong — just the hype and absolute spread of it over games forums or reddit seems unwarranted to me.

[Loud Whispers]

Having not played it yet, I refuse to call Elden Ring a soulsborne game until it is confirmed that it contains a tragic fight with an old man

[MrRoboto75]

Having not played it yet, I refuse to call Elden Ring a soulsborne game until it is confirmed that it contains a tragic fight with an old man

It at least has a poisonous swamp section.

[None]

first major boss has a giant walking stick he beans you over the head with, does that count? He just kind of sneers at your ambition after he pulps you, though.

Not gonna lie, some of it feels more like the bog-standard medieval fantasy fare that Dark Souls is usually good about navigating around, and in the effort to fill the open world with shtuff, some of it just feels pointless (a column of zombies marching into the ocean? A bunch of scythe bearing dudes standing around a ring of small holes summoning a slightly larger zombie?), and the woefully small amount of direction the genre generally gives the player allows you to rather easily traipse past fundamental gameplay elements and be none the wiser for their existence. You turn left somewhere and you're getting two-banged by blue guys, and then you turn right and find a mine mini-dungeon where the boss at the end is.... a slightly larger mook that you already fought several of at the castle down the road. The crux of the open world is that the sense of pacing is totally lost on the player, I find.

The open world is the novelty, really. Whether or not it holds up against the other entries remains to be seen, but I'm enjoying it regardless. I'm also one of those weirdos whose favorite was Dark Souls 2, so my opinion may not be so valuable.