For sure, but the argument being made here isn’t that Medvedev is speaking truth, but that he can be referred to with “Russia says.” Which, yeah, he’s a mouthpiece for the Russian government, so that checks out, accuracy of the statement notwithstanding.

He won’t even need to bother, we’re gonna contaminate everything thoroughly enough to last at least the next 10,000 years

Maybe it has something to do with also needing international support in order to defend itself from its neighbor… talk all the shit you want about the US’s stance on Israel, but shifting that to Taiwan is on par with claiming Ukraine deserved to get invaded.

Which I now realize is probably your next line. Anyway, oh well

Well, of course the real answer is that calling it fraud is simply how they justify the transfer of wealth to already obscenely rich people. But as for how the propaganda works, it ties into how they don’t believe in due process. Right now it’s most visible in how they’re kidnapping people, but it also extends to fraud. They claim fraud, no prosecution happens because ThE CouRtS ArE cORrUPt, and so they get to go outside the law and do things like cut already allocated Medicaid funds without losing support.

this isn’t a falling out. i swear there’s been an article once a week since january pretending This Is IT between the richest man in the world and one of the most corrupt, but turns out, they have a lot to offer each other. they’re talking a bunch of bullshit like they always do and news outlets are reporting their meaningless words uncritically like they always do.

wake me up when spacex loses funding.

I guess we’re all too busy watching number go up to actually manage anything. For them it’s their stock prices, for me it’s my seed ratio!

They do often talk about “it needs to be new,” but for the most part the things they release don’t actually follow that philosophy. Artifact was trying to follow the likes of Hearthstone. CS2 is a glowup of CS:GO. DOTA2, League. Deadlock is the closest they’ve come to something genuinely innovative in at least a decade, but even that is still following on the heels of MOBA/FPS hybrids like OW and Paladins, just taking more elements from MOBAs.

And the “not caring about money” thing wasn’t true in 2008. They were probably getting to that point around 2012, as Steam began to turn into a money printer and their microtransaction games took off, but that wouldn’t have been until after HL3 had been cancelled at least once. At some point Valve talked about the difficulties in selling Portal 2 (I think it might have been in the dev commentary? Idk it’s been years) and one of the points they bring up was how even a huge success like that game wasn’t living up to their other titles. They tried to implement microtransactions with the co-op mode, but they learned lessons about how that model only worked in bigger multiplayer games. One of the big stories they tell in both the HL1 and HL2 documentaries were the troubles they ran into with funding, and I guarantee they were not looking to repeat those experiences by continuing work on a game that had far less potential for return on investment. Again, that might have changed by 2012, but by then the momentum was already gone.

I’m not sure I believe that Valve ran out of ideas for HL3. That’s clearly the image they want to project, and maybe even what they tell themselves, but judging from the ideas they did have for Episode 3 they showcased in that documentary, there was more than enough to justify releasing a game. Certainly there was as much or more new stuff than there was for either EP1 or 2. I think it’s much more likely they simply decided their other projects at the time–CS:GO, DOTA 2, even TF2–had way more moneymaking potential. And I mean, they were right! They made a ton of money off of lootboxes and cosmetics for their multiplayer titles. I don’t think Steam had totally taken over the market yet, so they were hedging their bets on multiplayer microtransactions.

I dunno. The whole “it needs to be new” philosophy they constantly espouse to hasn’t really been true at least as far back as Portal 2. Even Alyx wasn’t particularly revolutionary as far as VR titles go. Maybe doing that type of design was new to Valve, but the only standout features that distinguishes Alyx from other games are the graphics and the (genuinely very good) grabbity glove object pickup system. Pretty much everything else is several steps behind other VR shooter games in the name of Accessibility™, from movement to weapon selection to the painfully dumb AI.

They didn’t run out of ideas. The movement FPS genre is alive and well for a reason, even today: there’s lots to be done. They just lost interest in it themselves, and I believe the reason for that is primarily monetary.

Next week: Trump claims to be an Eldritch being that coalesced out of Jesus’s anger while up on the cross over 2000 years ago

Go big or go home. “Russia starts using nukes and us government blames ukrainians for it”

Because as everyone knows, political change only happens spontaneously, without any organization in the lead up, and people are famously fired up by sitting around at home until we all get the magic signal to go cut politicians’ heads off

I did not but I’ll give you an upvote anyway

The key to having fun with the gonarch fight (and other huge chunks of Xen too, like the Gargantua chase and Nihilanth) is to discover that the jump pack is broken and if you hold your crouch key, it tricks the game into thinking you never touched the ground. So you never lose momentum and can infinitely slide around at a thousand miles an hour, boosting your speed every time the jump pack recharges a bar. If you’ve never learned Source airstafing, the wide open first stage of the gonarch fight is a great place to start.

I do agree the gonarch was changed to be a ridiculous sponge though. Its regular health bar is set a bit too high anyway, but on top of that it’s actually invulnerable through the whole sequence between the first and last stages of the fight. Which would be fine, except they didn’t do anything to communicate that to the player! It still bleeds, it still makes pain noises, and the only way to figure it out is to waste a bunch of time dumping ammo into it. Very silly oversight.

I’m not disagreeing in a general sense, but it’s funny to make that argument here when this info basically fell into the journalist’s lap. Very little actual journalism went into making this story possible

I was gonna say “there’s tons of em on .ml” but one of em was nice enough to prove it right in this thread

the current climate for GPUs is terrible with no relief in sight.

Not only no relief: it’s gonna get so much worse. Between the buying power of the dollar spiraling into the depths of hell and the tariff war heating up, this might be the last opportunity for a lot of people to buy cards for the foreseeable future. It’ll be years at the very least.

I was online when the 9070 listings first went live and had to fight not to impulse buy, which I was proud of at first. Then they instantly sold out and the more I think about it, the more I’m starting to regret it lol.

That’s just my perspective, though. Maybe with Americans no longer buying cards they’ll drop the prices internationally to try to boost sales… but the cynic in me knows they’ll boost prices even further to try to make up the difference.

Ain’t no way that’s a real person, who tf could possibly type that out and click post without a moment of introspection

I got down to my last egg like a month ago and keep thinking about when and how I should use it. Technically I could afford to buy more but it’s the principle of the thing; not so much about not being a Spoiled American but I really don’t want to support the companies price gouging these things. But I was also making a loaf of challah almost every week and I don’t think my flax meal substitute will work for that…

My solitary, lonely egg. Just chillin in the fridge.

Maybe I should start my morning with an egg sandwich tomorrow.

I’m pretty sure musk is still the richest man in the world (at least on paper, who knows what people like Putin have hidden away). Until that changes there is a .00001% chance of trump and musk’s relationship deteriorating

he would prefer it to stay reasonably rich

I think he’d much rather eliminate one of the top economies and make more room for the Russian economy to recover. I’d imagine the simplified version of the plan goes something like this:

1. Make the US destroy all its current trade relationships
2. In manufactured desperation, the US drops sanctions and tries to lean on Russia as a new partner
3. ???
4. Profit