CIWS-30

Sad, because I was a fan of them and bought all their games from Saint’s Row 1 all the way to Gat out of Hell (although not in chronological order) and got Agents of Mayhem for free somewhere, but think they’ve made some bad moves lately.

I think it all started going downhill from Agents of Mayhem, and them screwing up with the reboot of Saint’s Row was probably the nail in the coffin. I wish they’d just made Saint’s Row 5 instead, with wacky time travel shenanigans and a more polished set of superpowers.

At the point where they decided to “reboot” to something old school and grittier (TOO old school, imo) they really didn’t get what their fanbase wanted, and what new players who’d only heard of and experienced Saint’s Row 4 would get excited about.

They could’ve probably taken Saint’s Row up to 6 entries if they’d just iterated on the formula from 4 and possibly Gat out of Hell (I wouldn’t know, I got distracted and didn’t play it after I bought it, ironically). Similar to how United Front Games (the developer of Sleeping Dogs) could’ve probably stayed in business if they’d just made Sleeping Dogs 2 instead of that horrible “free to play” multiplayer asset flip of some of the least interesting elements of Sleeping Dogs 1.

We basically are. The only good news is that young conservatives believe in and want to do something about climate change, so when the current crop of oil-funded deniers die off, we have some hope to limit the damage. That said, I’m seriously considering moving up north away north as far away from the equator as possible, and to an area with fresh water and farmland.

Then buying a gun. Never thought I’d need one after I left the Army, but as things get worse, I suspect that more violence will result due to scarcity and more likely: stress related to perceived scarcity that doesn’t exist. It’s always the fear that’s more dangerous than the reality. We can probably get by with easy to grow, nutrient-dense foods that are boring to eat, like beans. It’s the stress of not being able to eat “tasty” food that’ll probably get people to snap. Gunfights over steak, etc.

I agree, but he’s unfortunately better than the alternative. I would have hoped that a guy whose nickname was “Amtrack Joe” would’ve done better. I’m guessing he was worried about the midterms or the 2024 election, given that everything that makes peoples’ lives harder somehow gets unfairly blamed on him.

It just goes to show that Democrats are just a more sane conservative party with more tolerant social policies, they’re not actually all that pro worker. The Europeans are right about this.

I doubt the title of this article very much. Ukraine is getting F-16’s and probably JAS-39 Gripens very soon. Offensives and counteroffensives have to be slow and methodical by nature against entrenched forces, otherwise you’ll take massive losses for very little gains.

Ukraine is on its way to gaining air superiority, and more vehicles and air defense is coming into their forces every month, and the longer this conflict lasts, the more likely it is that they’ll gain more advantages over Russia as the sanctions keep draining them.

The lack of air superiority is hampering what Ukraine can do, and once that issue’s settled, I think we’ll start seeing more steady progress. Plus in the wide world, Japans and South Korea are settling their differences over WW2 and will probably keep cooperating, and part of that will be to send more stuff to Ukraine in order to help win there so they don’t have to fight WW3 with China over Taiwan.

It’s not just the West that supports Ukraine, it’s also the Democratic parts of Asia.

Agree. Even recently, I would have up to 5-6 cans worth myself (have since cut down a lot), but alongside the financial cost, there’s also the acid eating away at your stomach lining and the excess caffeine to worry about alongside the Aspartame.

Frankly, given the stomach issues and acid reflux that too much soda can give you, I would imagine that people (even sodaholics) would have to stop much sooner than 20 due to all the other issues involved with sodas before the problems with Aspartame would even come into the picture.

Not to say that I’m not leery of Aspartame, but diet Soda has other major issues beside it.

Given how modern AAA games are and Bethesda’s recent track history, it’s not negative to be skeptical, it’s smart.

Especially since despite Microsoft watching over them and helping them to have the most “bug free launch in history” it’s still probably going to be a hot mess for weeks to a month after launch. I want to be pleasantly surprised, but I’m not getting my hopes up.

Plus, the recent release of Baldur’s Gate 3 with no microtransactions or season passes, etc. has gotten peoples’ standards up, and given that Microsoft paid a lot of money to buy Bethesda, we’re aware that they’re going to have to make that money back somehow, and will probably give into the temptation to do some really player unfriendly things to do it.

Bethesda’s been going all in on surprisingly expensive microtransactions for really tiny amounts of content, like in Fallout 4 and 76, and it wouldn’t be shocking for them to continue in that direction. People aren’t being mindlessly negative, they’re looking at current and past trends and making an educated guess about the future.

Very true. And if you stop and think about it, 2033’s only 10 years away. Maybe Metro.co.uk could post a followup to this story then. Just for that “Yo dawg, I herd u like 2033” meme potential.

This is why the rich who think that they can just buy their way into an enclave that’ll protect them from climate change are wrong. This and basically everything else that’s happening.

It’ll get bad enough and broad enough to affect them personally, but it’ll be too late for them to regret it by then.

Ironically, for old stuff at least, Piracy is the only way it’s reliably preserved. Even if you do want to buy it new to support the creators, oft-times you can’t. It’s because I can’t buy it that I turn to piracy. Not just for old games, but sometimes old comics and manga too. Occasionally Anime that’s no longer licensed or available.

Plus, it’s only going to get worse now, with Streaming services and online platforms delisting anything even that might not make a profit because they don’t want to pay residuals. I’m not big on pirating new releases, but that’s because I think we should support artists. I also think we should call for the creators to be paid more of the profit share vs. the money people at the top who seem to do nothing but fire people and shoot down good ideas to try to make everything the same carbon copy live service.

I also don’t have to pirate new stuff, because it’ll old stuff on sale at half price (or less) soon enough, and with all the bugs fixed and the features added the way it should have been at launch. My backlog is so huge that I won’t have time to go through it anyway before I die. So there’s another reason I don’t care much about new games. If I’m still interested in them a year or more later when they’re on sale and fixed up, I’ll buy it then.

As for stuff like Anime and Manga. Anime subscriptions are surprisingly cheap, and so are monthly manga subs if you know where to look. Viz’s Shounen Jump ($3) Vizmanga ($2), Azuki.co ($5), Mangamo (also $5 last I checked)… so long as you only subscribe to one at a time and rotate, you’ll probably never run out, and it’s a lot cheaper than buying it one volume at a time $10 each or whatever.

Recettear is something I recommend too, as it’s really unknown for how good it is. You play as an item shop owner (who’s a young girl) that has to make a profit from making and selling items, and there’s a dungeon crawling elmenet too.

Aren’t “Boomer Shooters” actually Millenial Shooters? That’s who played them when they came out.

Honestly, one of the reasons to get a physical copy is to save time on the download. Not everyone has blazing fast or reliable internet where they live. Just having to download a patch as opposed to the entire 80+ GB game can be a big deal to some. I know it was like that for me back when the only thing available in a past residence was DSL. No cable or Fiber, just DSL.

inb4 “Does anyone else think that the teacher in The Magic Schoolbus is pretty cute?”

also: “Hey, it’s Ms. Frizzle, not Mrs. so she’s siiingle.”

As someone who is good at memorization (although not as much post COVID) but has been historically poor at critical thinking, I agree. People kept telling me I was “smart” and that there was no way I could fail X or should fail X, but life experience and slow but steady analysis showed me that no, everyone (including my parents and teachers) were wrong. I was dumb as bricks, I’m just good at memorizing things.

I’m aware that my critical thinking skills aren’t great. I’m also aware that I had no business going to college (and failing of course) studying what I did (computer science) and that it’s actually very good and liberating to admit how fallible you are, and how bad you are at things, because it gives you the freedom and insight to know what you can do instead of what you can’t.

I’ve lived long enough to see stupid people succeed at what “smart” people fail at, just because they’re honest enough and humble enough to admit when they can’t do something, and also when they’re wrong. I saw that doing something right imperfectly (but effectively) is more useful than doing something wrong with perfect execution. It’s the difference between going forward at a walk, and going backwards with a rocket thruster.

I’m disappointed, but not surprised. This is how they are, especially during times of stress, like war. Culture could probably get better if not for their leadership, but I doubt we’ll see it improve until Putin and the people backing him get purged.

When I got tired of some BS changes Google was making with Chrome (and concerned about the Chromium near-monopoly) I switched to Firefox. It had just revamped itself out of the Australis debacle, and had some very good extensions available on the front page of its store, so I switched and never looked back.

Honestly, for what I wanted and needed out of a browser, it was just better than Chrome, and it still is. Highly underrated browser, and I wish more people would give it a shot. I also wish that Mozilla would give people the option to change its default icon with their new, more sleek orange and purple swirl without the fox and world.

The default Firefox icon honestly isn’t very stylish (especially when compared to the Chrome icon and the new Edge icon) and I think a lot of people may just avoid it due to not liking the way the icon looks. Dead serious here, marketing / image is everything for a lot of tech products.

Honestly, I’m shocked by this. I would have thought that they’d at least be not-stupid enough to have something like that.

Praise the machine spirit! Praise the omnissaiah!

/40K

My theory is that we were created by whatever most mythologies define as the devil, or altered / modified genetically by such a being into what we are today. The nice people who are altruistic are genetic throwbacks that the devil tried his hardest to breed out of the human race, but he wasn’t 100% successful.

Also, the true purpose of humanity is to destroy the earth via pollution and by killing and eating all the animals rather than to save the earth / take care of the animals. Things like cognitive dissonance were installed via software reprogramming (brainwashing) to take care of the remnant “moral feelings” that couldn’t quite be gotten rid of through DNA tweaking.

If you look at what the vast majority of what humankind are doing (rather than the small vocal minority of environmentalists) it honestly makes sense. Then again, I’ve come to see “God” as a mad scientist / absent minded professor who was all “Let’s move fast and break things, it’ll all probably work out post-beta” rather than an all powerful creator being. One of the many reasons I left the church.

What’s wrong with people is that sociopaths who crave money and power to do awful things like this tend to be very good at getting them, whereas people with compassion and kindness tend to be overly generous and want to see the good in others, so tend to give away too much money and power to those sociopaths, especially if those sociopaths are good at putting up a noble front.

Plus, vast segments of the human population are basically blind sheep that don’t think for themselves, and do whatever the media tells them to do. Only way to really solve this in the long term is by convincing people with morals to be more ambitious and to understand how to gain, then use money and power to influence society and the media. The dictator / oligarch types are very good at this (controlling money, power, and the media) whereas nice people who just want to help everyone are very poor at this.