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Joined 11 months ago
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Cake day: March 15th, 2025

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  • 1. Bioshock - It’s essentially perfect, the only downside is I can never play it for the first time again.

    2. Inscryption - It’s an odd choice, since it’s pretty meta, but it’s a game that I think about too much to live without.

    3. Doom - Purely for historical relevance, which cannot be overstated in this case

    4. Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time - I spent an embarrassingly long amount of time going back and forth between this and LTTP, but Ocarina also represents maybe the best year in game development history so it gets the edge.

    5. Slay the Spire - Basically the same argument as Doom - this game is a fork point in all development trends for at least 5, maybe 10 years after its release.


  • Now that he’s won and his victory was a landslide, this will be the most common strategy used by those that still care about appearing biased.

    For every ranting lunatic on Fox News or in the White House, (and let’s all let out a deep sigh over THAT Venn diagram), there will be another supposedly more reasonable person trying to blunt Zohran’s momentum with “healthy skepticism”. He can’t do X. Y will be next to impossible. He has to compromise Z.

    The thing is, that strategy can work. Public support is Zohrans best weapon, and it can be pulled through wearing people down. Get this young hotshot stuck in the mud and the shine might fall off real quick.

    On the other hand, of Zohran pulls off a big win or two quickly, say in his first year or so, then he’ll cement that anything is possible, destroy this line of attack and probably hold that office for 10 terms if he wants.



  • Betting on Trump lying feels like a safe bet to be sure, and nothing about it is out of character for American foreign ops. But that’s not confirmation of anything. And the problem is, I have no more confidence in the other side of this equation.

    In more grounded terms, If two known liars both give you their side of the story, and both sound plausible there is this overwhelming feeling of exhaustion and melancholy that hits me every time. What’s the point? Even if one of you is telling the truth, it was probably so distorted as to be worthless.

    I don’t know if I was just naive or raised by naive people, or if something has genuinely changed in the modern age - but it pains me greatly that we don’t even pretend to value integrity anymore.



  • This is one of those frustrating situations where we will simply never know what actually happened.

    Could Venezuela’s government have made this up? Possibly. They have motive and they are not the most honest people, to put it mildly.

    On the other hand, Trump and his Goons have be been bragging about bombing boats, talking not at all coyly about land invasions, and said openly they had people operating in Venezuela.

    So did those agents get caught? Or did Trump give the Venezuelans the idea to perform this hoax by running his fucking mouth?

    The CIA’s not going to admit anything. Neither side has any credibility to speak of. I guess maybe a third party investigator with the press or a foreign intelligence agency could try, but that’s going to be one source at best. I’ll have been dead like 20 years before it comes out what actually happened, if anything.


  • Even if you don’t get it - start at $30 bucks. The current is $16.50. If you get negotiated down to $20/hour you just gave every body on the bottom a more than 20% raise. I don’t think it’s reasonable to expect New Yorkers to live on $40k/year but it’s a hell of a lot more reasonable than $33K/year.

    I understand why minimum wages need to be monitored closely, and doled out with forethought and compromise. I get that raising up the bottom very suddenly tends to just be accompanied by price increases that ultimately still benefit the wealthy.

    But it’s also just true that feeding money into the bottom of the system always pays greater and more impactful dividends than trying to somehow feed even more to the top. It’s been proven time and time again, and yet we’re always told it’s pointless to try it this time, because Rich people will just find a way to get it back. Duh, that’s what Rich people do. They use their advantages to gain more advantage. But the more people’s hands that money flows through on the way back to the wealthy, the better off we all are.



  • I mean you’re right, but it makes sense in context in both cases because the plot, or maybe better to say the driving motivation for action by the characters, isn’t the real story.

    TLOU isn’t the story of two survivors trying to reach a goal- thats set dressing. It’s the story of a man who lost his daughter being given a chance to confront his grief and grow close with another young woman who would be the same age. The relationship growing, their mutual guilt and relief and joy in finding that familial connection in a dying world IS the story. And the climax isn’t Joel shooting 50 more people, it’s when he chooses her over the whole world. Even when thats obviously the wrong choice.

    From a plot view, nothing has changed. What actually “happened” was entirely between Ellie and Joel. But lots of stories are like that. If you released a movie where a grieving man connected with his adopted, formerly abused or neglected, daughter- that could be a good movie and you wouldn’t say “nothing happened” because it would be honest and upfront with its stakes. But fewer people would play that as a game so they have to obfuscate their actual story with apocalypse and zombie trappings.



  • I went in for chest pains at the end of last year, I was shocked at how fast I was seen. Once they established I wasn’t dying, I had a pretty long wait but overall service was really good and I paid nothing.

    Well, not nothing, I’ve paid taxes my whole life. But I doubt I’ve paid the 6 figures amount that would’ve cost me in the US even if you add all my lifetime taxes together and during that time I still drove on roads and stuff.

    Socialized medicine isn’t just a better option, it’s the only moral choice.


  • I love that story about the first New Testament baptismal. It’s so weird to think that that person was (after a fashion) Nonbin. It conjures this weird scene to me where Jesus is in some kind of board room and the Apostles are bringing him polling data.

    “Jesus, I know we have a mission statement. I know, I know. “Love thy neighbour” “Love everyone” “We’re all Gods children”. No, totally love that, very cutting edge. No, we’re so onboard. I just think we really need to consider not loving some specific groups. Like, Nonbins, or Trans people, or the Gays. First century Judea is just not very progressive and some of these demographics are…”

    Jesus flips whole fucking boardroom table

    "What THE FUCK, Paul!? Are we going to have this fight every Dad-damned week? Listen to me. Listen. It’s core to the brand. Do you understand me? The whole brand! We don’t love SOME people. We don’t love JUST the Hebrews, or JUST the Romans. EVERYBODY. If it’s not EVERYBODY, then what the fuck are we doing here? Seriously.

    It’s the whole goddamn brand. I promised a “New Way”. You want to take my vision - my divine purpose- and make it just like every other religion on the block. Totally dilute our entire brand image. Why would anyone choose the son of a carpenter, if I was going to be picky? Ok? That’s the core question here. We are doing this for EVERYBODY.

    No. No, of course I forgive you. I always forgive you. Just… get the fuck out and lay off the Queers."





  • For the record, and I know I’m not the first to say it, this woman committed NO crime. She didn’t overstay a visa, she didn’t protest illegally. She wrote something the administration didn’t like.

    For that, she was arrested by 8 masked officers in the middle of the street, in broad daylight. She was thrown in the back on an unmarked SUV. She’s received no legal representation. No trial. Not even charges, because again, she committed no crime.

    Americans, you realize you’re watching the death of your rights and the rule of law, right? You have no illusions about the fact that you are defenseless? There is no longer any guardrail between you and an El Salvadoran prison camp. In something that reminds me very much of Stalin, an accusation is now a conviction.