It very much has the “we must give meaning to life for the idiots who can’t run their own life… and by that we mean we think you aren’t human so just do what we need to be comfortable and dominant ourselves” vibe

Yep. I was in the primary market for it back then, and even I was like, meh.

Remember Battleborn? FPS MOBA from Gearbox that came out in like… 2018 or thereabouts. Never got off the ground and got completely shuttered in like, a year, iirc

Yeah there’s a lot of moral/ethical calculus that should be done when attempting to circumvent rules. Unfortunately, people who are looking to circumvent rules are not usually the people who would reliably do that calculus.

Kind of the same thing for political revolution. If you’re willing to go beyond the state apparatus to achieve your ends, are you also going to be dedicated to rule-following after the revolution is done? It’s a tough thing.

Aaah. Yeah that tracks.

“photos to signing 80s songs”?

I wouldn’t say proudly, but I do say “easier to ask for forgiveness than permission” semi regularly. But it’s never in the context of like, regular interpersonal relationships. It’s work stuff, usually. I could write a report and beg my superiors for their input and budget for some initiative, or I can just go do the goddamn thing and get it done in a quarter of the time it would take to get the first leadership meeting on the calendar.

Strong Towns is another useful example. They make cool, good, human-centered urban developments. When the mayor or whoever shows up to check it out, they go “wow this is fantastic!” and the organizers THEN say yeah, these are the 70+ local zoning ordinances we broke to make this happen. Then a bunch of nonsense pro-suburbia rules get lifted to enable more cool stuff.

I’m pretty hyped for DC20. I backed the Kickstarter… now I just need life to fuckin’ chill long enough for me to pull a game together to test out the beta rules.

I have no idea what genre of videogame, if any, could replicate the experience of One Piece multi-site battles on absolutely wild and varying scales of power, speed, and size.

But if any genius game dev out there wants to make it happen, I’ll take ten.

I was a child with an NES and virtually every Nintendo machine thereafter. Parents said my first language was Nintendo.

I still played outside all the time. I regularly rode my bike all over town. I didn’t have to be threatened to play outside. I dunno, people and situations are different, I guess.

That said, it’s certainly harder for kids now. I have a hard time imagining letting my kid ride a bike all over town, mostly because of traffic and stupid drivers. The free public places I used to hang out with my friends are largely gone now. Plus, like you say, the games are now designed to be addicting specifically in the ways that regularly extract more money from players. It’s just kinda bad if you’re not versed enough in the gaming ecosystem to know what’s a worthwhile experience and what’s a cash grab.

Aaahhh. Yeah that’d probably do it.

Jesus why was the text so goddamn big

#metoo was a needed movement, but in certain cases it definitely went too far. I think the “believe women” rhetoric makes sense in the contact of “sexual assault happens more than you think, we should stop completely ignoring or actively disbelieving women on impulse when they share their stories”. But some people just took it as “why would any woman ever lie about this, they must be telling the complete and full truth in all circumstances” which is unfortunately how the Al Franken allegations went.

That tends to make your phone screen look yellow/orange. Pink is a different thing.

I had that issue on an old phone, could very well be hardware variance.

White light is the combination of all those wavelengths. It is only the combination that makes it “white” in exactly the same way that a smaller range of wavelengths are “red” or “blue”.

Well I suppose not always. We did have a revolutionary war and a civil war.

But anybody alive today? Less bite than a newborn.

I’m one of the “company-provided-phone-only” folks. Thankfully, I work for a pretty decent employer who has never abused that in the nearly 10 years I’ve worked there. But I realize that’s a pretty rare privilege.

Same.

I wouldn’t equate voting for the lesser of two evils with “blind allegiance”.

For all of Biden’s faults (of which there are many) he’s still the better candidate on offer.

All the issues you bring up are valid, of course, but unfortunately there’s a lot at risk should Trump win. And voting for a senile old man is still preferable to voting for a fascist who is primarily running as a way to stay out of prison.

I’m not sure how we can hijack the DNC primaries to get a real quality candidate, but as far as improving our elections overall, that’s where I’d like to see some progress.