I think part of the issue is more related to the Peter Principle, the job that one must be good at in order to become a politician has a different skill set from that which makes one a good politician.

Never did I suspect this Stephen Lynch song to not feel completely outlandish.

I trust someone who’s better with puns and all the latest politics than I to do it justice, but I feel like there’s a rendition of “Brave Sir Robin” as “Brave Sir Orange” that could be quite good.

They do, but unfortunately, they’re radicalized nutjobs, so they aren’t much of an option now…

I’ve been using the Zelotes C-10 (wired for my desktop) and F-17 (wireless for work laptop), when they say vertical, they mean it. Anecdotally, it has helped with my wrist pains. I also wanted the extra buttons on the C-10, so I could map them for gaming (I also use a Razer Tartarus for my left hand for gaming).

I used a Nexus (nxstek.com) for years and it still worked great, only replaced it when I switched to a vertical mouse for wrist ergo, now my wife still uses, and it’s the mouse that’s lasted her the longest (she’s hard as fuck on mice for some reason). I’d suggest you check out the SM-8000B from them.

Annual Wealth Tax 1% on total assets over 10M, additional 1% over 100M, additional 1% over 1B, etc etc. Raises along with inflation or something.

Those style of maps make the gameplay into a frenzy, turns the twitch shooting skill requirement up, drops the tactical planning.

The sad honest truth is probably that there are more bigoted people out there that won’t vote for a Dem if it isn’t a white guy than people who would add votes to one who isn’t, particularly in swing states. Maybe I’m too cynical…

As for replacements, even the people who some polls show as being slightly more popular than Biden haven’t been through anywhere near as much of a dedicated smear campaign as he has, and if they were, we don’t know how they’d poll.

For public ones, depending on what people started getting, it’d really strain the AIs. You could go in like 1 or two ways, probably different people getting both.

Something very uniform but still unique, like a QR code kind of deal, AIs would hallucinate the crap out of that. Or abstractions, like people do to change the way the shape of their face to combat facial recognition.

For private ones, just don’t ever get it photographed, any image showing that area without it would be probably fake.

I am waiting for people to start getting both public and hidden authentication tattoos, so they can prove generative images aren’t actually them.

It’s more about the hardware/firmware/software uniformity and reliability for some people. My friend is in this camp, he doesn’t want to need to manage a PC, he just wants a box he can reliably turn on and use.

Palworld, rent a dedicated server, anyone can hop in or out as necessary. Guns, legally(?) distinct from pokemon monsters to catch. Cartoon violence. Tons of fun to be had.

While that’s part of it, it’s definitely not “just” that.

Sadly, part of it is that the game has released in a fairly stable/polished state, which is considered a positive in the world of broken releases. The multiplayer also just works with little issue as opposed to some problems of yesteryear.

There’s also a perhaps surprising pent up demand for good co-op PvE focused games. They blow-up hard but tend to fade out depending on gameplay quality. Part of this is the streamer effect, streamers like to play group games with other streamers because it helps cross-pollinate their audiences. Sales are also improved due to group/peer-pressure, if someone can pull in their friend group, that’s a lot of sale multiplication.

I also think that the developers tried to make a game that’s fun. A lot of decisions seem to have followed the rule of cool for this type of game e.g. pal mounts, firearms, catching people, automation of survival elements via slavery.

It also manages to have both a clear and guided progression system while maintaining the freedom for the player to just fuck off and do whatever they want while still at least partially progressing.

My only honest gripes with the game are how world saves are handled (they should use the Grounded system in addition to having dedicated servers) and that I for some reason can’t find the exit button on the title screen so to quit I need to alt-f4, for the rare times I need it.

Back in my teens one summer, I was playing Resident Evil Code Veronica by day at my friend’s house and Doom 3 alone in my basement at night, got about halfway through both but quit because of the constant nightmares. Lost to the psychological damage I guess.

Chex Quest was straight gasoline.

The point the other person is trying to make is that if a person wants to watch something, but the price is higher than they value or can afford for the experience they will not pay the price, so the company will not profit. If the person then pirates the content to view it, the company has lost nothing additional.

However, one could also make the argument that the viewer having the ability to pirate lowers what they are willing to pay, thus the company does lose some amount of profit in aggregate over time. This though is not necessarily true for those who lack the means to pay, rather than just the willingness.

Ultimately for people who do have the means, piracy is a symptom more of a service issue rather than a price issue. People generally will follow the path of least resistance to acquire what they desire. For most people a small payment and easy access will lead them not to pirate, but as prices rise, content fractures and UIs enshitify, the aggregate effort crosses the line and they start to withdraw and turn to other methods.

Everyone has their own willingness to pay for things on the demand curve, if companies pick an optimal price, they maximize profits, and aren’t harmed by people who cannot or will not pay that price utilizing a non-consumable resource without payment.

I still default to Hanlon’s Razor.

From Wikipedia, Mediatonic created the international remake of it, which presumably included some kind of licensing fee from the original developer, which this tweet implies is at least partially based on number of sales. Seems like someone involved in contractual obligations at Epic dropped the ball on at least this game.