A normal full time job including holiday is only ~140 hours a month. Assuming you believe their user stats too that would be pretty grim. You probably shouldn’t though.

11 billion engagement hours a month! Does anyone seriously believe that lol. And still not profitable! What do they need, ever human beings every waking hour to spin a profit!?

Yeah, again this is just semantics, a 401k in British English is 100% a pension. A UK defined contribution “workplace pension” is just a tax sheltered retirement account until it is annuitized, which is common and sensible but not necessary. The annuity is technically a totally different product, offered by life insurance companies (who interestingly with reference to above conversation would typically hold very little equity exposure backing it). Brits also call the equivalent to the social security retirement benefit the “state pension”. It’s a catch all for assets you use in retirement. Whether that’s used to fund an investment drawdown product or a life annuity or just taken out and splurged on a Ferrari makes no difference.

About half of the US population is enrolled in a pension even today…

https://www.unpri.org/private-retirement-systems-and-sustainability/private-retirement-systems-and-sustainability-united-states/5990.article#%3A~%3Atext=The+US+is+the+world's+biggest+funded%2Cactive+(working)+members+and+10.3+million+retirees.

Not true of UK defined contribution, you can do what you want just like a 401k, though it may be disadvantagous for tax purposes.

It’s pretty normal in British English to use pension as a synonym for retirement account, though I can see why you don’t like that.

Didn’t knights of the old republic have farkle in too? It’s a good game, and I guess just unfamiliar enough to bolt into a fantasy setting.

God help the partners of patient gamers (the ones that aren’t gamers themselves)

That’s his whole schtick though, I bet 90% of people end up with the “good” ending and it rings hollow and everything just feels like his chickens coming home to roost. I really into the Arthur morgan/Joel from last of us type: sympathetic but ultimately shitty character getting what they deserve and it feels fair but still sad. Fucking brilliant story telling in both cases.

P.s. I totally agree that the gunfights are almost always immersion breaking.

Some of your examples of harmony involve fourth wall breaking, which is interesting because I had always thought of the harmony between game and story as about immersion You’re right though, being seen as a player for what you are trying to do is the essence of harmony. That is if you’re trying to immerse, being wrenched out of it is bad, but if you’re taking the piss, the world should take the piss right back. Hard for a game to do both, but I had vivid memories or baldurs gate 1+2 characters talking to their “omnipreseent authority figure” that walked that line perfectly.

Yeah, the main story could have been so great if it had more non murder ways to progress. Or made your murders fewer so as to feel as impactful as the deaths of characters around you were. I it’s defence though it has brilliant moments where they’d really woven the game mechanics into the story. Mega points for minigames and the mission where you get drunk.

“own” I thought we were just licensing them?

Guess it depends how you define “bad”. In my eyes a good business does well by everyone: staff get well compensated and have a good work environment, customers get a good product at a fair price, suppliers get their invoices paid, owners (if not a coop) get some ROI and their name on the door. Trump has only ever managed 0.5 out of 4, ergo bad businessman.

Although with the overt politicisation of BLS I think I’ll be with you in trusting ADP more going forward. Going to be super interesting to watch any divergence from now on. I guess it could be that some of the YTD difference was some internal power struggle that was unwound by the revisions leading to Trump sticking his oar in, but I think that’s a conspiracy theory until someone gives a quote to that effect.

Still confused why you continue to emphasise estimate when ADP is also an estimate.

I already emphasised the difficulty of real time stats, revisions are not shocking, but perfectly normal. I don’t think anyone is that surprised (though we can agree that there are a lot of overconfident and less statistically literate professionals), the gulf between hard data and sentiment/alternative data (vibecession and so forth) was well covered and had to resolve one way or another.

ADP was +104k in July, so by your previous logic we should expect upwards revisions in the BLS July number as the year goes on right?

Ah an economist, say no more fam.

What are you talking about? They’re both estimates extrapolated from samples. I think most statisticians would prefer stratified sampling over one company’s payrolls processing, but whatever. Maybe chuds would argue that ADP is so much more efficient/accurate because it’s outside of the “swamp” of govt, it’s certainly an independent data point. I mean I agree with you in that BLS is not reliable either. Real time economics is hard.

If you honestly preferred ADP all along and will continue to espouse it’s superiority when it next contradicts your view rather than confirming it (as it will because data are noisy) then more power to you.

BLS jobs report was a beat, +140k jobs and unemployment down a shade. I agree with you on the themes but it doesn’t help to cherry pick data.

Oh shiiiit, do that and come back and talk to us when you get to the time travel level.

Are we just in the phase of the medium where technology isn’t the defining quality. It would be slightly weird to try to stay at the forefront of, say, novels without any regard for reading classics. Why shouldn’t games be the same?

Do you think sitting on your arse claiming there’s nothing to be done is more or less demoralising than singing in the streets with like minded people?

Maybe you work different than most humans, but I think the answer to that is pretty obvious for the rest of us.

I can’t help comparing it (unfavourably) to baldurs gate 1. The story just didn’t hook me the same way.