yeah it’s a little bleak tbh, the scents are an attempt to influence your memory and make you hungry, and things like magic bands are meant to make you spend as much money as possible by making money more opaque
it might go back to the american superiority complex; african and asian homeless people are different and distant enough to make us feel good about ourselves (poor foreigners), american homeless are “like us” so they shouldn’t have an excuse (just get a job like i did)
Y'know, I have no idea what I'd do in this situation and I really hope I'll never find out.
If a kilo of heroin just showed up in the back seat of my car, I'd throw it out the window and try not to think about it. I certainly wouldn't bring it to the police, because mere possession is a serious crime.
CP is the same way, except it comes with a nice audit trail which could sink me even if I delete it immediately. Do I risk that, or do I risk the FBI deciding I'm a Person of Interest because I reported the incident in good faith?
some small cities literally buy their homeless bus tickets to get rid of them, and their politicians point to the places they send them as liberalism run amok… how do you even undo such callousness
While this is true (my mother works as a homeless community outreach nurse in a "destination" state and has talked to individuals who show up as a result of this) its only a tiny trickle of the torrent.
A huge, huge number of your local homeless population is just that, local. A plurality of them are homeless due to unaddressed mental health issues. Solving homelessness completely may be impossible, but better mental health treatment infrastructure would get us a lot closer.
The argument is that diluting the mark can cause confusion, and that confusion can cause death.
"Videogames cause death" feels like a bad-faith oversimplification of the point they're trying to make. It's understandable, as video games are often wrongly attributed as creating violence... but that's not what they're saying.
They don't want video games to stop representing medics, for example... they just don't want the red cross to be synonymous with health, because it's much more specific than that.
> The argument is that diluting the mark can cause confusion, and that confusion can cause death. "Videogames cause death" feels like a bad-faith oversimplification.
I was being terse, not bad faith. In particular, "videogames cause death" is not a less robust argument than "trademark appropriation can cause confusion which can cause death". Moreover, I'm specifically being charitable and saying "I don't think this is what TFA means because it's so ridiculous, but I can't identify a better likely meaning".
But apparently there are a lot of people who think the "trademark violation => death" (again, brevity, not mockery) argument is serious, so I invite them to support their position with examples.
If I start putting the toilet symbol on doors without toilets behind them, eventually you're going to stop expecting toilets behind the door. You don't need an example to know that.
This also isn't about trademark, the red cross is outlined in the Geneva Conventions as a symbol with a specific meaning. That meaning is specific because it's meant to protect aid workers as neutral parties in conflict.
> If I start putting the toilet symbol on doors without toilets behind them, eventually you're going to stop expecting toilets behind the door. You don't need an example to know that.
Good grief. Can you think of a reason why your analogy about changing how a symbol is used in real life might not apply to a debate about how symbols are used in fiction?
Let me offer up an analogy that isn't completely and obviously broken:
If you watch enough Doctor Who, does it make you believe that real life police boxes are actually camouflaged time machines?
It's about the ubiquity in fiction. If every police box in fiction was a time machine, it stands to reason someone may be confused when encountering a real police box for the first time.
The misuse of the red cross, especially in video games, is rampant to the point that the Red Cross is worried about confusion.
There's additional issue with the fact that video games are very common, but warzones and disaster areas less so. So it's quite possible the fictional association, if overused, could redefine the real-life usage for many people. We already see some of this in the comment section... many people don't understand the difference between "health" as a concept and the red cross as an element protected by international law.
It seems reasonable to try and claw that meaning back.
> It's about the ubiquity in fiction. If every police box in fiction was a time machine, it stands to reason someone may be confused when encountering a real police box for the first time.
This is the silliest thing I've ever heard, and not every fictional red cross symbol is a threat anyway. This whole thing seems at least as ridiculous as the moral panic about violent video games in the early 2000s, except that I kind of expect ridiculous moral panics from conservative parents not so much from the official communications arm of one of the largest NGOs in the world. Absent any actual evidence I think we're just going to have to agree to disagree.
Asking works of fiction to stop using a symbol doesn't seem at all like a moral panic to me. What they're saying is "this symbol has a specific meaning, and it's important to us that it's not diluted."
They're not calling for video games to be banned or even re-labeled, they're just trying to prevent the red cross from losing the intended meaning (which comes with an international treaty intended to protect aid workers)... it seems like the method of applying this mostly consists of asking nicely.
I wasn't clear. I'm not suggesting the RC are engaging in moral panic, but that their reasoning (the absurd proposed causal relationship and complete and utter lack of evidence) resembles a particular phenomenon which happened to be a moral panic.
It's not an insinuation of anything, they're trying to emphasize the gravity of what they do to discourage casual use of the symbol. Their intention is in the headline.
I am still waiting for a hackernewsque article explaining why French pharmarcy have the blinking green crosses showing the time and temperature and often a whole complicated LED show.
The red cross had issues in the past with the symbols. Muslims didn't wanted to be treated for them (seeing the cross as a symbol for christians), so they needed to create the 'Red crescent' symbol exclusively for Muslims. But then jews, hindi and asians felt excluded also, so a third symbol was necessary, the red crystal, that aim to represent humanitary work without being assimilated to one of the bands in conflict. The red crystal is used in delicate cases to not upset anybody.
The red cross should be named now the red crystal, to hide that it was created in an European context, by a christian, and also that is just the Switzerland flag with inverted colors (he was from Geneva).
Is a good example of how politics and ideology can spoil anything.
I always saw it as green 'plus signs', as in your health (or hit points) are increasing.
I've literally used them when developing a video game before, and that's what I was thinking as I implemented them.
I've also used the red cross when making a game before without even thinking about a possible trademark or protection, it was already a generic symbol to me. Come to think of it, I just used it again in the art for a board game I was making. I guess I should change it, but I'm not sure to what (I guess a green cross?).
In Mexico there are a group of public state owned hospitals with the "green cross". It is the place where they take you when you get in an accident and don't have anywhere else to go. There's also the red cross, but that's the same as the one in the article.
There's a pharmaceutical company in Korea that's literally called "Green Cross". (Looks like they recently changed their logo to... a rainbow cross! While keeping the name. Not sure why they thought it would be a good idea...)
I would assume that was for Pride Month (June). Many companies adopt a rainbow flag representing LGBTQ for that month. If so, they've probably gone back to the old one by now.
Yes, it's used in many places. It's very commonly used to indicate pharmacies throughout Europe. I've also seen it used in the US on various medical supplies and defibrillator stations.
If video games or art or movies are depicting the appropriate scenarios, such as a scene involving army medics, wouldn't that be a constructive use of the symbol? It would spread awareness and education.
That's where I'm confused. I see the issue with products appropriating it as a sort of brand hijacking...like the example of a first aid kit with a red cross.
But tv, movies, games, etc, just showing an accurate representation of real life, within the media itself seems...normal.
I think if they have to, the least confusing thing would be a red square with a white cross inside it. That's what a lot of first aid kits seem to do. Though perhaps the Swiss wouldn't be thrilled. Maybe a white cross in a red circle?
In real life, the symbol is pretty strictly limited to a specific international organization well-known for their neutrality in armed conflict. Portraying it as just meaning 'healing' takes away from the power of that neutrality.
"Countries around the world protect the red cross emblem and limit its use to official Red Cross organizations and programs, as well as the medical services of their armed forces. In the United States, only the American Red Cross and the medical corps of the Armed Forces are permitted by law to use the red cross emblem. Some U.S. companies were granted an exception that were already using the emblem before 1906. Use of the red cross emblem by anyone else is not only prohibited, but also unlawful in the United States and around the world." (https://www.redcross.org/about-us/news-and-events/news/2020/...)
These are medical units that fall under the protections of the red cross as outlined in the Geneva Conventions.
"Under the Geneva Conventions, the three distinctive emblems of the red cross, red crescent and red crystal are intended to identify and protect medical and relief workers, military and civilian medical facilities, mobile units and hospital ships during armed conflict."
Ah, but going back up to the top, the Red Cross seems to be unhappy with in-game depictions of this reality.
Edit: Perhaps I misunderstood. I thought the Red Cross was complaining about military ambulances, hospital ships, and so on, depicted in games. In addition to less realistic uses.
I don't think games are very good about doing an accurate representation there. They mostly seem to slap a red cross on anything "healing" related, like not-non-combatant military medics (Starcraft medics and medivacs come to mind, which the game specifically expects you to fire at).
To complicate things one further layer down, what about games (Escape From Tarkov's AFAK for example) having products in them that do hijack the red cross, which is somewhat common in real life.
This falls under the appropriate case as defined under the Geneva Conventions, because these would be used by people administering aid in armed conflict.
Yes, but then depicting a military first aid kit in a game, as it appears in real life...is somewhat normal. At least to me. That's what you see on TV and movies.
And, FWIW, those first aid kits in big green plastic boxes are mostly used by regular soldiers. The medics have different kits in backpack looking containers called an M-9.
DOOM's health pickups have had the red cross on them, it was released in 1994. DOOM was a widespread cultural phenomenon, at least in the US. Did the Red Cross try to address this at all?
This is actually a completely inappropriate scenario. The point of the Red Cross symbol is that it indicates an internationally neutral organization that is very specifically not associated with any country.
Army medics != Red cross, and that's a big difference.
If a red cross is taken to mean just army medics, they might be considered to be "just" the enemy's medics, a "legitimate" target for some, unlike the Red Cross who are neutral and help everyone.
It's objectively true. The US ignores many widely accepted international standards, and in multiple cases stands alone in doing so. It's not the defacto world view and shouldn't be treated as such.
People have already replied to you to let you know that various major European countries use the green cross to refer to a generic pharmacy.
You already acknowledge this elsewhere, and you've also already acknowledged that there's special meaning to the red cross as opposed to merely referring to pharmacies.
I don't know what you're doing excluding Asia or the USA either, while saying
> A green cross would confuse no one.
And then following up with
> I'm sorry, but if your only example is the US then you're likely to be wrong about a lot of things.
Using the green cross for a pharmacy supports the suggested use as a generic symbol for health...
I didn't exclude Asia, I stated that my experience there is more limited than the continents I listed. The US isn't a reliable authority on any international standards.
If you started up a new video game and the health packs had green crosses instead of red ones, would you be confused?
