i think it really does come down to the cohesion of the teams. A small team that has worked together for years is going to make a cohesive product with a strong vision. A huge team with extremely high turnover is going to make something disjointed and dependent on formula.

Firing half the team every three years to avoid having to give them raises probably isn’t doing much to help their long term capability.

Like, the gigantic teams with high turn over aren’t new, but we’re now seeing the long term results of the strategy.

I would say that up to 2013, things were on a steady incline, but since then there was a stagnation, and then a decline in quality from big name publishers who used to be really great. And I don’t think it’s a “oh I’ve just gotten older and more cynical and I’m nostalgic for the things I grew up with.”

Because I can go back and play games that were well before my time, or around when I was a kid but never played, and really enjoy them. But if I pick up a game from even 5 years ago from one of the really big studios… at best it feels under cooked. Like there is potential, but a lot of stuff just never got finished. At worst, it feels as if the game lacks any intention or thought in the design beyond how to maximize the skinner box.

Take for example “vampire the masquerade: bloodlines”, it wasn’t a game I played when it came out, in fact I only played it a couple years ago, it has a lot of flaws but it is still a great and engaging experience, it felt like the team making it had a strong vision and they executed on that well. A lot of modern games from big publishers don’t seem to have a vision beyond a vague aesthetic and the final projects routinely feel disjointed and poorly thought out.

if I had to guess, he wants a domestically acceptable reason to use mobilized conscripts. The cost of relying on volunteer contract soldiers is breaking the bank. They keep having to raise the signing bonuses and pay to convince new people to come in on contract. Mobilizing conscripts would be much cheaper since they get payed a flat rate that the government decides.

He’s fishing for incidents, attempting to ratchet up tension domestically, trying to create a situation where it becomes politically feasible to start using conscripts. Last time he tried the domestic response scared the shit out of him.

I don’t think he can provoke the scale of incident he would need though. Like, regardless of how good his propagandists might be, if he couldn’t turn Ukraine blowing up a 1/4 of the strategic bombers, or creating a fuel shortage by blowing up refineries in to a rally around the flag moment, then how would Poland shooting down a fight jet do it, or Poland flattening a drone battery? It just seems like him grasping at straws as his capacity to maintain the fight diminishes.

Sounds complicated and finicky.

The volume in the menu is more granular than you can get with the buttons.

I’m going to live forever or die trying, so it’ll clearly thus last forever.

The perpetual power cord.

My favorites are the ones where the plug is live and the socket draws power, and if you hold the plug wrong you die.

The second season is supposed to be out this year, so probably sometime in the fall or winter season.

Damn, I love dorohedoro. Can’t wait for season two.

Every day I see things that make me want back academia for genetic engineering. One more reason to put on the list: bioluminescent patches for LGBT lights.

I mean, I think multiple levels of hear me out can exist, it’s just funny to see people turn it in to a competition and then to slap down their entry and it’s just… the exact thing they were complaining about but gender swapped.

So does lady Dimitrescu, but if you said she was a “hear me out” people would just be like “that’s a conventionally attractive women not a hear me out”

the drug is important for treating pain and fever during pregnancy, which can also harm the developing fetus. High fever can raise the risk of neural tube defects and preterm birth.

… uh huh, could, maybe, the correlation of Tylenol be the result of people taking it to treat symptoms of something else that is more strongly correlated?

Like, seriously, “oh yah but he’s a monster and has a weird head”

And? He’s still conventionally attractive excluding the behavior and a single stand out feature. which could also be applied to a lot of “hear me outs” that I routinely see get mocked as “not wild enough”.

Let’s say, you wanted to reward a politician for supporting your political beliefs, you can’t just… give them money now can you?

But, you can help them get a book deal, and then when the book comes out you can buy a bunch to donate to libraries or something. This has the benefit of artificially inflating the sales numbers and getting it on a best sellers list.

Ah yes, trans inclusionary radical misogynist, the TIRM.

I mean, I was already basically boycotting them. They ain’t got nothin I really want to watch, nor do I much care for theme parks or cruise lines.

it probably chose O because that’s the letter to mostly likely be associated with a flickering neon sign in the corpus of works is pulling from, like in “hotel” “motel” “open” “closed”.

To me at least, what’s funny isn’t the immediate mistake, but that so much money is being wasted on systems like these when mistakes like this so clearly show how limited the technology is.

Content that can be tagged as “Ominous noir tone” often contains flickering neon signs, it also tends to have people eating at diners.

Ergo, copy paste series of words about flickering neon signs, inset setting of dinner.

The logic or thought is non existent, just probabilistic relations between phrases, tone, and words.