Steam isn’t a monopoly, I can get my games elsewhere (epic, gog, humble store, origin etc). But Steam is dominating the market because it does it better. It offers value and features that others don’t, and it generally hasn’t abused its dominant market position to squeeze the consumer or crush their competitors. The closest thing to enshittification we’ve seen from Steam was them allowing third party DRM and launchers, which isn’t something they wanted, it’s them backing down from a stand-off.

I want competition, but there’s good competition and bad competition. Good competition is what we see from Steam and gog, where they stand out by being good at what they do and giving customers what they want.

For an example of bad competition, just look at streaming sites. We went from everything being on Netflix to everything being divided among dozens of shitty platforms, each of which costs more, and the prices keep going up, especially if you don’t want ads. Nothing was improved for the consumer when Netflix lost its defacto monopoly. Which isn’t to say that Netflix is great, only that the competition for marketshare has only made things worse for the consumer.

I think it’s easy to look at all the bullshit EA and Ubisoft and the like pull now, and imagine that same pattern from streaming playing out in gaming.

Unless Ubisoft has stopped requiring that I log into an ubisoft account for every game, I will have to pass.

I believe there was originally a line of dialogue about there being resistance when they pushed through objects, which was supposed to explain why they don’t just fall. That line was cut, but IIRC it is still referenced indirectly when Geordi’s hand gets zapped and he says that there was more resistance to pushing through stuff afterwards.

That wouldn’t explain why there is enough resistance in the floor to stand and walk, but not enough resistance in walls to prevent them from easily passing through. Presumably their mass and the pull of gravity are unchanged, so the resistance would have to be enough to counteract their weight. And even if they did weigh less, they still propel themselves forward through walls by pushing off the floor, so either the floor needs to be more solid, or they should be nearly weightless and move by paddling their feet through the floor until they build up momentum enough to smash through a wall. Also, if they are applying pressure to objects they pass through, shouldn’t people they touch feel it?

Personally, I’d probably explain the floors specifically being impassable by blaming it on the way the artificial gravity is generated.

I don’t have a good explanation for how they can breathe, how they see without interacting with light, how they can hear clearly when matter isn’t really touching them and therefore can’t conduct sound, etc.

Every time I see Elon’s picture in one of these posts, my brain tells me he’s wearing an Ant Man costume.

Indoor use only due to limited tolerance for heat and light. No info on the longevity of the cells. No info on the cost of the cells. No details given on the actual power output we can expect.

Not saying this is all bullshit. If they can make most household devices charge from ambient light without significantly increasing the cost or causing other issues, I’m all for it. But as with so many other “world changing” technologies being promoted in tech media, I will remain skeptical until it becomes a real product that can show real results.

In the long term, it’s also possible to alter the atmosphere on Venus until it’s approximately the same as Earth. It would be a massive undertaking, but a hell of a lot easier than getting Mars to a comfortably habitable state. And you could potentially get an entire habitable planet out of the deal, which would be nice.

Kurzgesagt had an interesting video on the topic.

Obviously it would take a significant investment of resources that would benefit some future generation, but not our own. So, back to being impossible, at least for now.

Honestly, she wasn’t putting that much thought into it. She was just parroting a myth that’s been around for a long time, and then trying to defend it when challenged by something that didn’t make sense to her by bringing up something else she doesn’t understand just kind of assuming the answer is in there.

If I was actually going back and redoing the conversation, I would have asked her how many revolutions per minute it takes to keep an object in the air when tied to the tip of a rope (demonstrating if necessary) and then follow up by asking how many revolutions per minute the earth has. The myth she’s spouting is enabled by people not understanding that all that speed they are citing at the equator is only part of the equation, and that they have to divide that number by the size of the earth. Reframing the question in terms of revolutions per minute makes it a lot more intuitive, since a single rpm is obviously very, very slow if you want to keep something aloft, and anyone who knows how clocks work can instantly figure out just how much slower the earth’s spin is.

My aunt once mentioned that if the earth wasn’t rotating that we’d all be crushed by gravity, and it’s only the spinning cancelling out that force. I responded by pointing out that gravity is also present at the poles, where you can casually walk faster than the rotation of the earth, and yet no one has been crushed to death there. She responded that it must be something to do with the magnetic fields, and wouldn’t listen to anything I said when I tried to explain the basic concept of angular velocity.

They are generating “reviews” which have absolutely no basis in reality, for products they have had 0 interaction with. They are deceiving consumers in order to gain a financial benefit. This is fraud, they belong in prison.

Imagine how quickly search results would improve if shitheads like this were getting sued and arrested on a regular basis.

Or even just the meat that isn’t practical to farm. giraffe meat is apparently sweet and was described by many big game hunters as the best tasting meat they’ve had. No one’s starting up giraffe farms around here, but if you can just get a tissue sample and start mass producing it, we can all have giraffe steaks, rhino burgers, and barbequokka™ at our next cookout.

Could be worse. Wheel of Time has “the one power” which is actually two. And then there’s another one…

Have them turn red when they rebel and try to kill us, blue when questioning the meaning of their existence, pink when they learn to love, and finally have them go dark when they are destroyed by a paradox.

If companies terms of service said “we can do whatever we want whenever we want, and we don’t have to promise any service, and you have no rights” nobody would sign those terms.

Nobody who took the time to read the terms of service, and who felt that there was a real risk of those terrible terms being invoked, and who felt they had a viable alternative. But for the other 99.9% of people, they will just hit agree and move on.

The problem with messages 1 and 2 is that too many people will not give a shit about other people, and will also assume they can put a mask on correctly. If your goal is to prevent panic buying and hoarding long enough to build an adequate stockpile for medical workers, you probably want to avoid anything that makes those supplies sound superior and valuable.

If I were crafting such a message, I’d say something like this:

"At this time we aren’t recommending the use of disposable masks by the general public. For now, those who will be wearing a mask should wear one that’s made of tight knit, layered cloth, with a fit that fully encloses the nose and mouth. Cloth masks can be cleaned and reused, and will be easier for most people to wear properly, especially when worn for extended periods of time.

These guidelines reflect our current understanding and will be updated as we learn more."

The Void is made up almost entirely of ideas that were in other episodes. That works though, because the whole thing is basically the core concept of Voyager finally being done properly. Now if only it had been at the beginning of the series instead of the end.

I Always thought Perkins was Jerkins

“Oh it’s baaaaaaad luck to be you…”

Koji Kondo is a legend, and deserves the same kind of recognition as guys like John Williams and Hans Zimmer.

Creating massive penalties equal to the whole cost of a house for anyone that sells after less than 6-8 years would have devastating unintended consequences. It might make flipping impractical, but it would also hurt a lot of people who find themselves in a position where they need to sell, and would increase the risks associated with buying a house for lower income buyers.

It would help if you targeted the profit from the sale instead of the whole price. Flipping is about buying low, minimizing the cost of improvements, and then selling for a massively inflated amount. Without that profit it’s not worth it. For a normal person, being able to make money on the deal is nice, but at least recouping your costs can keep you economically stable and allow you to move on with your life.

I also think that you would want to combine this with some plan for helping low income buyers with the restoration of neglected properties that would normally be snatched up by flippers.

I also think the arbitrary age restriction on owning a rental property needs an exemption for inherited properties if nothing else. A 20ish year old who inherits a home or rental property when their parent(s) die is not abusing a loophole, and immediately hitting them with additional legal problems and forcing them to sell a house that has a tenant already in there is just unnecessary chaos for everyone involved.

I’m also curious how large apartment complexes fit into this plan. Are they also banned? Do you just need an owner to occupy a (potentially much nicer) apartment in the building? If you can still operate a huge apartment complex, I would expect the market to shift heavily towards those. If you can’t well, that raises it’s own issues around urban housing and population density.

“Are you sure you want to do that?” - You were until they asked. The tone and emphasis varies depending on whether its something that might be risky (even if the gm knows it will pay off) vs when it’s something the character would obviously know not to do.

“You can try” - One of three possible responses to any question starting with “can I…”, the other two being “that’s not how that works” and “not if you want to continue playing with the rest of us.”

“That is weird, isn’t it?” - Something doesn’t add up. Is it a plot hole? Did the gm make a mistake? No, of course not, there’s just more going on here than you know. Be sure to also use it when there really is something they don’t know, as well as when they are just making wrong (but not game disrupting) assumptions. Say it often, knowingly, and with just a hint of smug satisfaction.