Incredible game that can be a little jarring for people who are probably expecting something like Baldur’s Gate 1&2, Fallout 1&2, or some other kind of isometric killfest RPG. It essentially turns the dialogue into 90% of the game, but the dialogue is so damn good that it doesn’t matter.

It also takes getting used to damage, as sometimes you can “die” in seemingly random ways. I was on a rooftop, I think trying to reach for a scarf or something, and failed my roll. That caused me to apparently get so depressed that I lost the game. I can’t remember which stat/trait it was but I think there’s a morale or mental trait you have to watch out for too.

Pirate this game if you wanna give it a try, don’t ever buy it. This is what the developers have advocated for and it actually fits right in with parts of the game itself.

Really great party game, kids love it. There’s a constant push-pull to make the level just hard enough. It kind of breaks down though if somebody has made it effectively unwinnable for everybody and you can’t find a way to unblock it. Otherwise though, it’s a fantastic game.

A Planescape area/sidequest, just make it so far out there and weird, but let it have almost nothing to do with the main plotline. You find some random portal that dumps you there and it’s just this weird sort of thing you get into that you never talk about again afterwards.

Yeah, they’ve had shitty elections for years now. Odinga has been in like every election and contests it everytime, even causing really bad election violence at multiple points. This led to them reviving the role of Prime Minister specifically for him to placate Odinga that election. They’ve literally only ever had two prime ministers in their history (President is their head of state), they abolished it again after Odinga’s term was over.

Google translate says it means ‘Planetary Defense Cannon Commander’.

Kenya may be a relatively stable democracy in Africa, but there’s still rampant corruption in their police forces. Police officers are typically underpaid, so to supplement their income they’ll do things like set up random checkpoints on roads in order to shakedown drivers for money. Them going to Haiti doesn’t seem like it’s really going to help with anything.

At this point, why is Hamas still even holding onto any hostages? Whatever the original plan was has obviously blown up in their face and the hostages aren’t really giving them much leverage. If anything, it gives Israel a thin veneer of an excuse to continue with the genocide, they don’t really seem to concerned with accidentally killing any of them. If Hamas released the rest of the hostages though it takes away one more excuse Israel can hold onto, though at this point, it may not make a difference one way or another.

I loved RTS games back in the day, played through all the Command & Conquers, Warcrafts, Starcrafts and all that, but then gradually it felt like the genre starting morphing into DotA and other games and I just sort of moved on. I was mostly single-player, though got into multiplayer later, but remember it being so fucking nerve-wracking and having to click hundreds of times a minute and trying to optimize everything, I’d be so worn out after playing. My best game I ever remembered playing was Starcraft 2, there was one match where multiple players tried ganging up on me in a FFA match, it was obvious they were coordinating, and I somehow fended them off and took the game. It wasn’t an important game or anything, but that was one of the fond memories I have from that time in my gaming life.

I think I eventually just shifted over to turn-based strategy instead and I don’t know if the genre ever really returned from DotA.

Nobody seems to talk about in the US either, one of the most basic human rights is in crisis and it’s just business as usual.

So is Ukraine supposed to micromanage how each piece of equipment is being used based on how each donor country feels about attacking Russia?

Target Moscow

I like the idea that the Great Filter is really just civilizations turning inward. Like they all get to a point where they realize that space travel is just really not viable and so they stop looking to explore the universe or find other life. Instead they turn to virtual worlds to prolong their existence with what resources they have available in their own star systems. Not even Dyson spheres or anything, they just go into digital hibernation and live out the rest of their lifetimes in a fabricated paradise for however long they can. Maybe they’re able to use drugs/genetics/whatever to slow time down to a crawl where it feels like they live thousands of years within a normal lifespan.

For Outer Wilds fans, basically:

Still hitting those strategically important military targets I see.

Might also be a return to the Heretic series.

I wonder if the AI is using bad code pulled from threads where people are asking questions about why their code isn’t working, but ChatGPT can’t tell the difference and just assumes all code is good code.

One of the most epic face-plants of the 21st century and proof of how vulnerable democracy is to misinformation.

Fuck virgins

I was just thinking about interactions like this I’ve had a few times with different nice drivers, where I think they’ll be trying to wave me through (no flashing brights or anything), I’m assuming to be nice, but they’re far enough away that I can’t see them, so I’m not entirely certain of their intent. Usually it’s a busy road, so there’s very little margin for error, if I misjudge what they’re doing, then there’s gonna be a problem. And then you both end up missing a chance to go because they screwed up the process, when, if they just hadn’t tried to be nice and just went like they were supposed to, we both could’ve gone. Just follow the dumb traffic laws.

The exception to this though is at my kid’s school. To turn into the school, there’s a system that most of the parents follow and it works well, we essentially treat the entryway as a modified 3-way stop. Whoever has the easiest time to get in/get out go last in the order. So people needing to pull out and make a left turn onto the main road get first priority, then people needing to make a left turn into the school, finally people making a right-hand turn either into or out of the school go last. Anyone not going into the school just keeps going.

This system works better than when a traffic cop is occasionally posted to direct traffic (for whatever reason). With the cop, traffic gets backed up everywhere around the school and it takes everyone forever to get where they need to go. Without the cop, most people follow “the system” and traffic flows smoothly. When someone doesn’t follow the system, it’s not necessarily a surprise because they just don’t wait, but usually a car or two later follows the system and everyone goes where they need to. You’re rarely waiting for long.

“For the crime of supporting an oppressed people facing genocide, we want to send you to a war zone where you would most likely get killed by an American ally committing war crimes on a daily basis.”

“Israel, are you committing war crimes again?”

“No, this is antisemitic.”