Yeah, I’m 30 and I have way more recent embarrassing moments to keep me up at night. I’m not thinking of shit I did when I was a kid

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

I don’t think it would prompt some kind of vindictive vote. That side of it is only going to energize those who were vehemently republican anyway. Republicans would hammer on any and all sympathy they can eke from having their candidate assassinated (regardless of the truth they will say it was the left, and at best people will think the guy was just crazy), and the average person only half paying attention will eat it up. Dems would be even more hamstrung in their rhetoric against the GOP considering the gravity of an event like that. Even with that aside, they’re now running Joe Biden against whichever face the GOP tells their voters to line up behind – who you can bet will be all in on the kind of stuff that will do even more lasting damage to our country. Biden is not a strong candidate, and without the uniquely unlikable personality and character of Trump I’m not sure there’s enough motivation amongst voters to carry him to another term.

But all of that was a lot to type, so I just said it would give them a massive boost

I tentatively agree. The man himself I have no sympathy for, but an assassination of presidential nominee would have made everything even worse. GOP would get a huge boost, and could replace Trump with someone that is actually competent enough to fully implement their 2025 treason-esque bullshit. Not to mention how much that would have inflamed an already looney tunes level of political discourse.

It’s also just not how we should do things in America. Call me a hopeless patriot, but we should try to live up to the ideals we espouse.

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.

People who’ve never lived in Texas really don’t get it. Everything is spread out to an almost ludicrous degree. I drive an hour to get to my friend’s house, and I don’t even consider him to be far away. We both live in the same metroplex.

Public transportation is almost complete failure here due to not being prioritized, and driving anywhere is a pain in the ass with drivers from all over just winging it on congested streets. Don’t even get me started on overpriced tolls that have become the only reasonable way to travel 30min+

Texas is not ok.

To play devil’s advocate, though, I do wonder what the exact rationale was for this. Was Al Jazeera engaged in legitimate espionage, using their news organization as a front?

Even then, it’s a broadcast that Al Jazeera could just go view somewhere else and get the same info. Its a very thin excuse, and I think it just is what it is at face value. A poor justification for limiting coverage of the the war

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.

I haven’t seen it because I have the opposite problem.

I can relate to that. I’m one of those people who won’t even squash bugs, and even heavy-handed, poorly written emotional moments in movies can make me tear up because I’ll inevitably find something in there that speaks to me. Shits wild compared to my friends and family

There’s gotta be some crazy scam that will work on me that I’ve never heard of. Every time a new one comes around its always something that throws a ton of red flags out the whole way. They have to be just catching people with particular blind spots

It annoying, but also leads to some wonderful moments. I was at small event yesterday, when a weather alert started rolling out. I can only describe it as glorious sitting at the back listening to a sea of angry alarms, and watching people frantically try to silence their phones. Idk if that outweigh the alarm fatigue it gives people, but it was a fun moment for me.

Pretty sure I can still quote the Cloak from beginning to end if you catch me at the right time. I’m horrified by how old the video is now…

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.

It makes a little more sense when you consider R2 was heavily modified by Anakin, who also had lightsaber needs.

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.

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.

Find Egress; Aquire Ride. That kinda works.