You’re right, but I will say the federal govt has a sometimes magic way of greasing certain wheels and getting things done in a hurry, if the right person is pushing on it.

Lol ah yes, the “fork me daddy!” camp weighing in

I hear ya. Cheers and best wishes!

Not disagreeing and I like that approach. I do want to say, though, that I’ve committed myself to keeping track of some of the egregious stuff that’s going to come and addressing it with the people in my life who voted for Trump and did not properly know / accept what that entailed.

To bring them back, I think we have to find (effective) ways to show them bad things they did not want to happen, that they helped enable, as they occur. It’s tough because I don’t want to turn every interaction into political badgering (and I won’t), but there’s no chance I can stay quiet as the great shitshow unfolds, either.

Oooh, that’s a fun one. I can just barely remember some of my early research projects for school - getting source material at the library was a bear. What a time to be alive.

When did they add blackjack and hookers?! That’s a hell of a feature update

We’ll also assume that destroying the universe takes constant time.

Well yeah just delete the pointer to it!

Yep if I look at the back of my phone, instead of this, it is indeed!

Edit: OOPS. You meant whether the statement about being puzzle like applies to OG Rogue. You said almost exactly that. My bad lol, below remains intact to display my shame (and enthusiasm).

It’s a puzzle in the sense that you have a constrained number of options, both in a given combat scenario and in the general sense of building your character and attacking the dungeon. And usually all those options have some tradeoffs, beyond just the opportunity cost. Skill (and creativity! one of my favorite elements!!) of the player make the difference between a doomed run and a cakewalk. Careful marshaling of resources, knowing when it’s time to spend something rare or take a gamble. Knowing what late game change might solve the weaknesses your character has and help achieve specific goals, knowing what would be folly.

Lot to learn, and then deploy in fun and creative ways. And challenging. Loss is the teacher, lol. So good!

Oh snap! Haha well, musta been something I sensed in your comment. DCSS sure feels like an extra fun puzzle to me. Cheers!

A good rogue like is a super complex puzzle with randomness thrown in! Completely see the similarity.

Only RL I went hard for was DCSS for some reason, and it’s hard to estimate how much time I put into that over the years. At least as much as other heavily played AAA or MMO type games for me. What about you?

Got anything to recommend? I’m a dude with butt and thighs that cause me to size up in the waist routinely, else I get the “pocket handles” thing, or just rip stuff lol.

Edit to add, by way of skin in the game: I used to shop for denim with a “tapered” cut (Levis had / has one, for example). If anything I now think they made the problem visually worse, drawing attention to the situation. I now prefer a pretty traditional straight cut, BUT when I’m overweight enough those may as well feel like JNCOs lol. I’m just barely trim enough at the moment to where a typical straight cut doesn’t feel like my ankles are swimming in fabric. Guess it’s Ankle Tents or Apple Bottom Jeans for the Lads, lol. Or be less chubby, in my case.

I’m becoming more aware of this lately too. Just realizing that Amazon for example has almost negative quality control, in the sense that a counterfeit product from one supplier just gets lumped in with the real ones from other suppliers, and then they sell them having lost the knowledge of who supplied the counterfeit.

And I know no one is checking for flammability of kids’ clothing / items. So I mean, who’s to say stuff made with lead or whatever the fuck else isn’t just getting hucked on down the line too?

Got any rules of thumb or heuristics you’re using? So far all I’ve really got is “nothing for kids from a store without a physical location in my country”. Just basing that on the fact there will at least be someone to sue, which usually encourages better behavior. I also generally avoid the “I can’t believe this is so cheap” products (outside legit sales) because usually something important is getting squeezed somewhere, given the already generally oversquoze situation that is “the market”.

That seems pretty plausible to me, yeah, because it’s being attempted already and we seem to be sliding that direction. Privatizing those public services sounds like precisely the way to usher in a fresh new hell like this, completely agree.

I really wonder what that may look like too and how likely of an outcome it is. I mean we’ve seen versions of it with “banana republics”, but that wasn’t quite the modern era and wasn’t sophisticated tech companies. I also think most tech companies today would not want that responsibility, just the rewards, it’s a bit hard for me to imagine them actually attempting to provide a government. I think what we’ll see is increasingly hollowed out public institutions matched with ascending power and control of the corps, but leaving the govt in place (largely for a target people can point to when they’re mad) and stopping short of overtly seizing power. Best of both worlds for the corps.

I think you’re right. I think Netanyahu is extremely clear on what he’s doing and what outcomes he wants.

Oof, somehow this escaped me, even though I participate, while hating it, and thinking at least a bit about that fact along the way. The thing doesn’t have to even be deliberate if it’s effective - accidentally-discovered techniques often work as well as planned/sought ones.

By which I mean, of course this situation is not some deliberate “super-rich cabal” silly scenario, but damn if the levers don’t work exactly that way. My and my family’s future well-being, as a strictly mandatory goal to pursue, is turned into fuel for a machine I hate (contributing to 401k), and the hope I’ve been soft-coerced into is a hope that the hateful thing spits out enough at the end for me to keep:

• a roof over our heads, not otherwise guaranteed nor likely
• continued medical care through life post-employability, not otherwise guaranteed, only somewhat likely (Medicare)
• the limited dignity of dying with some care, but true misery along the way, as it is for almost anyone who doesn’t “luck into” a sudden end…again, not otherwise guaranteed, nor fucking likely (end of life care is an absolute disaster in this country)

The folks with the resources and “character” to enjoy, exploit, and move stocks love this. The new yachts we buy them, ridiculous “homes”, and the unbelievably fresh new whatever’s on their idiot status comparison instruments are never-before-seen and even more egregiously wasteful than their awful rivals’.

The folks doing less well than me? I mean we don’t even hear their misery, except in limited outbursts at strange times in retail and food industry settings or other such. The folks actually working themselves to death, SO many of us, are too fucking busy to even properly cry out.

For real. The big tech companies are today basically approximating and exceeding what have before been exclusively state-level capabilities. Not all of those capabilities, of course, but enough that the writing’s on the wall. Meta, Google, Amazon (and others) - they truly see themselves as above “petty” things like governments. Just obstacles to work around.

The question is what will we allow them to get away with, not how far will they try to take things. We should be clear on that.

FWIW I upvoted your comment above that got so many downvotes cuz your comment (and edits) felt super reasonable to me.

With that said - it’s been pointed out to you that the reason people are sensitive about this is because of the astroturfing going on right now and the extreme harm that will come if enough people are convinced again (like in 2016, myself hoodwinked by that episode) to not participate. We will get the worst outcome (like in 2016).

No one is mad at your point of view, I don’t think. I bet most downvoters share it, actually. But the stakes are too high, the recent campaign to disillusion voters too successful (2016), and the time remaining too short - you need to quit it, now, or you’ll be rightfully seen as an enemy to progress.

Your points are important. There are more important things right now, though. As hideously distasteful as that is, that is the situation we’re in today. It isn’t my fault or yours, but here we are.

Edit to add: there will be lots of room to push on policy in every direction once this election is over (and “settled”, woof). Any president on their first term tends to work hard, eventually, to secure a second. That’s our best hope of the changes we want, to push on the Harris/Walz administration with everything we’ve got, for round two. Shitty, but again, these are the cards in our hand. We don’t get to deal or swap them now, we only get to play our hand. If we fuck this up, we really may not get more decent hands than this for a long time (and incalculable suffering, borne by the most vulnerable, until we get there).

Thanks, I probably wouldn’t have bothered to watch it if you didn’t post it (just due to fatigue basically), and I’m glad I did. He’s a class act, a real rarity among politicians, and our nation really fucked up by keeping him sidelined.