West by God Virginia. I spent a lot of time there reminding people we fought for the north.

I mean, in context that verse is about being aware one’s belief in Jesus may cause strife with their family/community, and how Christians are meant to endure this strife without denying their faith. The choice of wording makes sense in the context of the time it was written, when affirming Christ is God would have absolutely caused some major animosity with those who don’t believe. It’s assuring the reader that the division and pain that will come from those disagreements is not lost on God, and also not something we can turn away from and ignore.

The Christians that everyone is up in arms about all the time are close to the worst representation of the faith as possible, and you can easily point out their lazy interpretations as well as scripture that, more often than not, outright rejects their twisting of the faith. Modern day Pharisees all the way. Unfortunately the church on a national level is inundated with them, and has done a poor job of separating from them.

I agree with this. I use the phrase essentially as “this is the reality” to either set a baseline, or just a different way to say c’est la vie. It frustrates me when people say it’s always a dismissive phrase, because when I am dissmive with it I’m not doing so in a negative way. There’s something to be said about letting little inconveniences lie and fade away.

You know what, I’m here for it. Anytime I hear about the cicadas coming back it’s always over the top dread. People freak out, and there’s so much acting like seeing a cicada is going to grind life to a halt. Everyone seems to lean into the bit.

The fact that the growing answer to the cicadas this year is a wildly different “fuck it, we’ll eat them and then they can’t get us” could not be more beautiful to me.

The idea the my life is so low stress that I can enjoy simple pleasures? That’s the dream.

I used to think this way, until I tried writing more sci-fi and I kept running into weird moral quandaries trying to keep stuff realistic on a human level. I genuinely don’t think there will ever be a threat that could rally all of humanity at this point. Not only because I don’t believe aliens are a thing we’ll ever experience, but also because everything I’ve seen points to people being too chaotic. Even the perfect enemy (some bugs that just want to kill us all) would have humans helping them out, a contingent of people who think the whole thing is a deep fake, and a multitude of people preying on the flawed reality of those groups and others to horde whichever resource (money, food, manpower, etc.). That’s before you even get into the various well-intentioned factions that would form around a variety of “best” approaches to the issue.

I’m not even saying this in a doomer kind of way, I’m rather optimistic and believe we tend to stumble forward. I’m just saying the rally around the flag moment for humanity feels like a total fantasy.

The headline, which very likely isn’t even real, is also not inherently fascistic. If anything its more a statement on people being so stressed with life, that a fantastical idea of going off to live a sci-fi movie life is appealing.

You’re pulling the fascism from the movie, which is inherently satirical. It makes sense something like that, which was already popular, continues to be so when the satire has more real world connections. You’re on a platform with a ton of nerds, they’re gonna reference sci-fi classics. If anything I’d say that’s a healthy sign. Satire is arguably one of the strongest forces pushing back against fascism and the like on a cultural level.

Does she still do Denuvo games? I know she doesn’t work with Empress anymore, so there must be somebody cracking those for the repack if so

I don’t think she’s the only one able, just willing. Isn’t there still someone who consistently cracks Madden games or something similar? Also fitgirl maybe, but I think that’s just repack stuff.

Proper intermittent fasting is quite a bit more involved and planned out than “avoid meals”, and doesn’t seem to be what the other comment was referencing.

As a non-fat person who doesn’t exercise consistently, it’s not that simple for the vast majority. There are a lot of factors including health/genetics and the stuff mentioned in the comment you responded to. I’m not skinny because I avoid meals, I’m skinny because I lucked out genetically and I really don’t have to worry about what I eat in terms of gaining weight.

Also, avoiding meals is like the worst way to maintain your weight and you should stop implicitly recommending it. It’s just going fuck up your metabolism, nutrition, and ability to maintain your weight. Quality matters substantially more than quantity, and quality is prohibitively expensive for many.

This was the biggest adjustment for me with my last program. I was one of those annoying people that tested super quickly, and I developed some bad habits such as picking out the key parts of the question and immediately moving on as soon as I hit an answer that checked the right boxes. When I came up against “they’re all technically correct, but you need to choose the MOST correct answer” it was a goddamn brick wall. I adjusted and grew because of it, but holy shit do I have a new button to push when it comes to multiple choice (and trick questions, but that’s a whole soapbox).

I say all that to add that there is something to it. It made me learn the material in a more applicable way. I stopped trying to just retain lecture based on what seemed likely to be tested, and starting understanding concepts as a whole. It kind of forces you to work abstractly with what you’ve learned. I still hate it, but I won’t deny that kind of testing had a positive impact.

I could see it working as an animated “job of the week” sitcom style show about a team of DRG miners. There’s nothing about DRG that ties it too strongly to the concept though. You could just make a show about space dwarves without any mention of DRG, might even be easier without whatever “lore” the game has in place (I like the game a lot, but if there’s a story I haven’t found it).

Not sure if they had the same issue as me, but maybe. I loved the game, but the last act had the typical crpg feeling of all the possible storylines condensing into a few. Not a major failure, but it really stuck out to me because of how well the rest of the game handled it. They did a phenomenal job of making me feel free to tackle each previous act however I wanted. The world reacted pretty well, and there were a few points I was actually surprised to see characters react specifically to some weird solution I came up with. At the end it felt like my choices mattered much less, and I was on this track of betray/kill one Big Bad or the other with the only difference being who goes first and what flavor of help comes along.

I think this is an issue all crpgs will have (it’s just too much work to have many wildly different endings), but the amount of discussion around BG3 being the new standard for the genre makes the issue stand out. At least for me.

we’ve also seen people who used to spend a considerable amount of money on games stop doing so, because the market doesn’t cater to their preferences.

I have to wonder how significant this is. Anecdotally I agree with it, but I wonder how many people are like me. I used to buy at least a few new/full-price games a year, but now I might buy 1 if the stars align (last two were BG3 and Elden Ring, prior to that I can’t even remember…maybe Deep Rock?). I have more expendable income than I’ve ever had these days and still love to play games as a pastime, but I’m buying fewer games. I 100% attribute that to the shitty practices the industry has picked up, because 9/10 that’s what turns me off from buying a game until it’s 5 bucks on Steam or free on Humble.

RULES OF NATURE!

*Throws a whole-ass Metal Gear"

Interestingly enough, 2/3 of those are subs I dropped within the last year or so based on a lack of quality/content for what they cost (never bothered with ESPN, NHL games are easy to find). Seems like streaming is starting to collapse a lot quicker than TV did.

So now we’re saying she actually did have both signficant political and legislative experience, but won because of a penchant for fundraising. Which is something you see as soliciting bribes. That’s a fair interpretation.

From your original comment:

That’s how Pelosi became Speaker in the first place in spite of having no legislative accomplishments to speak of nor seniority: she was simply the best at collecting fat checks from rich people and their corporations.

My gripe is why invent this idea that her taking a bunch of bribes and being good at soliciting more is the sole reason they made her speaker, with no other qualifications? She had held prominent positions within the party for a while (decades), and was minority whip (second in command essentially) for some time prior to becoming Leader/Speaker. She was minority leader when Dems took the house, which automatically makes her a major contender for the position and she was comparable to her opponents on the whole. A cursory search of her career casts a ton of doubt on your claims, and they’re obviously flawed to someone who lived through that time.

Getting caught up in bashing Pelosi waters down the legit criticism you have, and makes your viewpoint seem biased. We should be upset that her penchant for fundraising is such an asset, not that she was good at it in the first place.

Pelosi had literal decades of political experience, and was co-authoring legislation in the late 80s concerning the AIDs crisis. She became Speaker after Democrats won control of the house with her as minority leader – a position she won in 2002/2003 after being directly under it for a couple years.

I get not liking Pelosi, or fundraising I guess, but it’s bizarre when criticisms are spun seemingly whole cloth.

Come on, man, it’s “water under the bridge”. I want to contribute but it felt like we were drifting into malaphors there for a second, so I’m gonna play it by year and just see what comes next.