There was a post recently saying the total sum of wage theft, including conventional theft and the results of suppressed wages, totals to like $50 trillion over the past few decades.

Shit’s bad. But other than the rich, people in the US have like no class consciousness.

CEO seems like an idiot and/or coward.

On the one hand, yes. On the other, I don’t want them to stick around doing evil for a long time. Maybe something immediately debilitating that takes a long time to finish?

Classic RPG. My half orc “beat with an ugly stick” master of time magick and backstab lives on fondly in my memory.

Also my extremely pretty elf, also a master of time magick.

I was hoping you would explain what you meant by “There’s not a reason to fight most enemies in most video games to be honest”. I don’t think that’s a true statement. I think most games do give reasons to fight enemies.

I haven’t played enough BotW to really weigh in on it, specifically.

One of the reasons I prefer playing on PC over other platforms is there’s usually fan made mods / cheats. Like, yeah, I could do something really tedious for four hours, or I could get a mod to skip it. This is my leisure activity, not an exam.

I try to be mindful that too much cheating can water down the experience. Like, if I was playing BG3 and just set everyone to max level from the start, I would probably have less fun, personally. But if someone just wants to do the story and have fun with exploding barrels? Not for me to judge.

(I do draw the line at multiplayer. Cheating against other people is rude as heck. )

There’s not a reason to fight most enemies in most video games to be honest.

Hmmmm… that’s a thinker.

In the older zeldas, you didn’t especially need to fight stuff on the overworld. I’d usually just run by, or kill the ones that were in my way.

In most FromSoft games, you can run past enemies but that can quickly spiral out of control. Killing them gives you time to explore safely, on top of the XP rewarded.

In shooters like Doom, you could probably run past most enemies, but they’ll keep attacking. Clearing them makes you safer.

Monster hunter it’s the whole point of the game.

What games are you thinking of where fighting is pointless? I don’t think it’s “most” games.

Yeah. Often when I talk to people who say they “don’t have time” I wonder where their time is going. Often to watching TV. Sometimes podcasts. Social media is a big time suck.

But like if you have time to watch all of the office again this year, you had time to play video games.

A friend of mine realized they were just losing hours a day to Instagram. Delete that, and you have time for better hobbies. Play a game. Read a book.

Having children seems like a bigger factor. The only couple I know that has kids still has time. One spends it on DND, and other on TV and simple phone games.

Oh I remember this post. I remember being surprised to see The Courtneys on the list. They’re a fun band. Did a nice live show when I saw them, once.

Right, humans are bad about that kind of thing. I think it has to do with Dunbar’s number? The monkeysphere? It’s hard for us to model a lot of people as full people in our head, especially as they’re more removed from us.

Like you probably don’t really think about the garbage man as a fully fleshed out guy with hopes, dreams, a favorite band, a love that got away, and all that. When you have some absolutely rancid trash, you probably just throw it in the can and forget about it. But if it was your mother or best friend that was going to have to deal with it, maybe you’d be more careful. Wouldn’t want the bag to rip and spray maggots all over Mom.

That’s fine. That’s all of us.

But I think there’s degrees. Shades. Like you mentioned cell phones. Most of us accept the out of sight horrors that go with them. But, like, some people are absolute assholes to wait staff. Just treat the waiter like shit, are rude to the coffee shop people, whatever. I think most of us recognize that as bad.

Somewhere between those two points I think is “I’m going to build software to spy on people”. Personally, I think that should be ok the far side of the line. The not okay side. Why? A bit of self preservation, a bit of ethics, and a helping of “I don’t want to contribute to bad things happening to people, even ones I don’t know”.

This post is getting long. I think you’re right that it’s not as simple as “doesn’t care about other people” but I think that’s a factor.

The original or the remake? I think the original is more solid overall, but the remake has some fun stuff.

Did you know in the original, you can get more than one support effect on a spell if you have more than one copy? I only learned this like last year, despite playing the game when it was new. So you can do like

[ Ultima + MP Absorb ] [ Ultima + HP Absorb ] [ Ultima + Quad Magic ] in your armor, and when you cast ultima it’ll Absorb HP, MP, and cast four times.

Also that will freeze the game on the 2nd to last boss.

this is a question I often want to ask the pearl clutchers.

I think some of them don’t have an answer because they actually support the regime, and they’re going hard on “non violence” because they don’t want people to fight back

Some probably haven’t thought it through, and don’t have an answer.

Some probably have an answer that’s a variation of “too late”. You know, after they came for the unionists, the jews, the catholics, the mexicans, and there’s no one left to stand with them.

Single use plastic should he illegal for most things. Yes, it might be inconvenient to have to carry your own thermos or whatever, but filling the ocean with plastic is worse than inconvenient

He was a pretty smart guy, so I’m pretty sure he understood the ramifications. This isn’t like a plumber working in a building that happens to house an evil company. This was directly working as a high ranking software developer at a shitty software company.

Palantir is pretty awful. I knew a guy who took a job there, a bunch of years ago. When he said where he was going, I asked “But what if they work on something really shitty? Like spying on people?”. He was like, “Meh”, with a big shrug.

He was friendly and kind to the people around him, but I guess he just didn’t care about anyone he didn’t know personally right now.

I feel like most of my friends follow the news, but I bet you’re right that most people are just in a haze of screaming cucumbers.

I believe so. Otherwise you’re testing memory as well, which would make the results very confounded.

I can’t find the one I did, but https://www.varsitytutors.com/6th_grade_reading-comprehension-problem-440865 seems free.

https://www.k12reader.com/subject/reading-skills/reading-comprehension/6th-grade-reading-comprehension/ also came up.

I’ve already posted this a few times, but Ed Zitron wrote a long article about what he calls “Business Idiots”. Basically, people in decision making positions who are out of touch with their users and their products. They make bad decisions, and that’s a big factor in why everything kind of sucks now.

https://www.wheresyoured.at/the-era-of-the-business-idiot/ (it’s long)

I think a lot of us have this illusion that higher ranking people are smarter, more visionary, or whatever. But I think no. I think a lot of people are just kind of stupid, surrounded by other stupid people, cushioned from real, personal, consequences. On top of that, for many enterprises, the incentives don’t line up with the users. At least wikipedia isn’t profit driven, but you can probably think of some things you’ve used that got more annoying with updates. Like google putting more ads up top, or any website that does a redesign that yields more ad space, worse navigation.

Someone posted the other day something like “A stupid person is someone who creates net negative gains. For example, they hurt themselves and others, and gain nothing from it.”

I’m so tired of “AI”. I’m tired of people who don’t understand it expecting it to be magical and error free. I’m tired of grifters trying to sell it like snake oil. I’m tired of capitalist assholes drooling over the idea of firing all that pesky labor and replacing them with machines. (You can be twice as productive with AI! But you will neither get paid twice as much nor work half as many hours. I’ll keep all the gains.). I’m tired of the industrial scale theft that apologists want to give a pass to while individuals who torrent can still get in trouble, and libraries are chronically under funded.

It’s just all bad, and I’m so tired of feeling like so many people are just not getting it.

I hope wikipedia never adopts this stupid AI Summary project.