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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 3rd, 2023

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  • In many states, if you have a gun anywhere in possession while committing a drug crime, even selling weed, it adds years of mandatory sentence onto the charges, often way more than the drug crime itself. I would be extremely weary of anyone mentioning anything about a gun and drugs together in a communication the cops can pin on you … because while they may be the nicest dealer you ever met, they are not the smartest.


  • It’s fair to continue to consider them in competition with other store fronts. Don’t be fooled into thinking it will always be a great way to get cheap games, though. That brand, is EXACTLY what IGN paid for when they bought them: for the faith they built up in people like yourself, that they are and will always continue to be a trusted company. And part of the amortization of that purchase, is converting that belief into money, by enshittifying it. By taking advantage that they can make less valuable offers, raise prices, and fail to keep up with competitors innovations, on the backs of people remembering the good experiences they had with the company based on its original ownership.



  • Maybe not in some countries. It’s certainly a way that term gets used in the US. See also, reduction in force (RIF), downsize, reorg, shifting priorities, etc. The way labor laws are written, companies are encouraged to do this, because it circumvents protections against firing someone on leave, pregnant, or in a minority. When an individual is let go, there’s risk of litigation or claims that it’s because of some protected status: and correct or not, we’re a very litigious country with a lot of lawyers looking for a payday. So more and more, companies have normalized layoffs even when they’re doing very well, because its a way to “clean out” the company of less productive employees with much less risk of getting sued: and they can always rehire or shift exceptional employees they want to keep.


  • I always assumed there was some tradition to cutting your hair short before going to war, because long hair would present numerous liabilities - more maintenance, potential visibility issues, potential to foil cover/disguise, and potential vulnerability in hand to hand combat. And there is a lot of military tradition to a short haircut, though I’m not sure how much is based on the above reasoning. But I’m not a historian so maybe this is just a bad interpretation of Mulan or a random teacher passing on low quality education.



  • It feels like there’s a lot of potential here. One of the most loved colony sims, Dwarf Fortress, thrives on this concept of emergent behavior: yes, the descriptions of the individual characters, their motivations and backstories does have a sort of hollow, procedural generation to them. But the stories they enable, the wacky quirks like an engraver going nuts putting up murals to cheese on everyone’s walls, the fact that when you get an unlikely hero or battle outcome it isn’t the author’s giving them destiny but a true random fluke, the unexpected disaster of opening an unseen water or lava flow or awakening some ancient evil - that can create a wonderful sandbox where players encounter and create their own stories.

    There’s a balance in story telling, especially interactive story telling, between romanticism and realism. Between what we want to happen, and what actually happens. And sometimes, oftentimes, it’s the things we didn’t want to happen that make a story more compelling and memorable.


  • I had a good laugh when I noticed this tag on steam yesterday.

    I think the reality is, “boomer” as a term is here to stay and a moving target: as gen x ages into 40+, they’ll become boomers. One day when gen Z becomes old, they’ll be called boomers. At least here, there’s a fun double meaning to the term. For me, I came into the Doom franchise at Doom 2, at an age where what I played was still very much influenced by my parents and friends’ parents. So yes, Gen X were the primary player base, but it’s not unfair to say the boomers often paid for the game and maybe sat down to a round or two of it. And given that, it might have been one of the last games they were able to sit down and enjoy. I don’t know if anyone else experienced something similar, but my dad in the last 20 years of his life or so really locked in on the 1997 MTG: Shandalar game, and despite several computer upgrades along the way was never interested in any of the newer MTG digital offerings, preferring the cards and UI and experience he was familiar with. And while similar with Doom that game was played by many Gen X and Millenials, I think those demographics mostly continued to follow the franchise through newer releases: but maybe not the boomers.


  • This last week - factorio, working on city blocks, it’s a little daunting, but hoping the blueprints will serve me in upcoming modded runs that need more scaling.

    Vampire survivors, caught a sale, fun as hell if a bit of a patient gamers moment. If you just emerged from under a rock, it’s a minimalistic horde survival roguelite with lots of metaprogression through unlocks, reminds me of an oldie called Crimsonland.

    Latest pickup was book of hours: a game made by the guys that did Cultist Simulator, with a similar cards mechanic but a little less stress with everything trying to kill you. Was a little confusing at first but I’m starting to get the hang of it.

    Little bit of Orb of Creation: the 0.6 patch is in beta and overhauls the whole game. Combat currently disabled but research, artifacts, and augments in general were made way more interesting. This is an incremental game (big numbers, very casual difficulty, goal tends to be to unlock more stuff and bigger numbers).