Recently read Hayden’s World and there’s some FTL in there that (mostly) obeys relativity and the associated time dilation issues, so that was fun to see. Also, a generally unpleasant experience for the humans on the craft. Otherwise I liked KSR’s Red/Blue/Green Mars, how the story developed travel technology organically on a timeline.

Ao you’re saying if they feel guilty about rape they can get the prize?

IDK…some places have never really had Democracy, or their democracy is openly corrupt, or have been some other shitty leadership for generations. People can live under these systems…just the have/have not division can be really stark.

The experience of a brand new game with a new computer build that upped the standards. Particularly from the ‘90s to ~2010. Games pushed ahead with more expansive levels, better graphics, better sound, larger worlds. All more incredible than what you’d ever played before. It was a joy just to see it and experience it on top of whatever storyline and toys were in the game itself. Every year there was a leap in some facet of gaming.

I haven’t really experienced that since. PC builds are just way more expensive for minimal gain, franchises are just rehashes of old games, and it’s hard to find storylines and worlds that are fleshed out enough to make me want to invest the time.

On an individual game level, Battlefield’s Gunmaster mode is a real rush. Success can be ripped away instantly, you’re on your own skill, PvAll, and it’s a race to the top. Intense AF to win, got my heart rate up.

Yeah? Kinda the point. Like absolutely nothing was happening in Portland. Nothing at all. But trump sent troops anyway because Portland is such a hellhole. Now there’s protests, but they seem to be far more entertaining and mocking than anything else.

Yes

Pretty easy when they took away my favorite app and tried to force me into their ad-riddled POS - along with their hostile treatment and shuttering of subs that didn’t conform. It was already getting to the point that, after a decade plus of being a “redditor”, the place was wearing thin. The constant reposts and karma whoring, the hive mind, the low-hanging fruit of quips getting the most upvotes vs a well-thought out reply, the shills and bots, they were killing Reddit IMO. The action against third party apps was the final straw.

The troll farms are disastrous to this country.

Pretty much a default that religion, given the opportunity, will seek to push its rules and values on others. Doesn’t matter if it’s a medicine man or someone sitting on the local school board. I don’t have a problem with religious people in principle either, the problem is that even if you do meet a decent couple of people who appear to keep their religion to themselves there’s hundreds of thousands in their “club” that are going to fuck with things. Kinda like being in the republican party - even if they’re decent people, aren’t bootlickers, aren’t homophobes, etc… they still vote for, support, and associate with a group that does a lot of shitty things.

The liberal establishment always abandons effective fellow liberals. Sanders, Mamdani, Thunberg…they’re actually trying to do something. That makes the established neolibs look ineffective and upsets their donors. So they turn their backs on the rabble rousers.

Because they run out of “create” and they’re slaves to the quarterly report.

A new company that makes/sells a widget that is desirable will grow naturally from the demand for the product. It has to get bigger to manage the demand. They go public to get more money to grow more quickly. Those public investors expect a return on their stock investment purchase.

Now competitors show up. Competition is bad for our big startup (despite being a supposed tenant of the free market that allowed our company to grow quickly in the first place) that is now a major power in the widget industry. You can only make the widget so many ways, can’t really improve it, and the market is becoming saturated. So what happens next? WidgetCo’s stock is flat! Investors are mad! The CEO is in trouble! Now we do acquisitions and enshittification. Buy the competitors and adjacent product makers. Now there’s “growth” again even though nothing new is made, in fact the product gets worse and nobody gets hired as they want attrition to get rid of redundant employees. The hope is that the widget is so engrained in society that it can’t be done without. Now do unbundling. Subscriptions. Sunsetting. Modify the product so that new versions must be bought due to batteries or servers no longer supporting previous versions. If you can’t make new things, make the customer buy new versions of the same old things.

Gotta keep pushing that quarterly report line up to keep the investors happy and the CEO bonuses coming.

Probably China. It’s one nation, full of industry and under a single leadership. They could produce whatever they needed. China is one time zone.

Next competitor is the slice encompassing a large number of countries in Africa as well as most of western Europe. Huge number of people and industries contained in that slice, but they lack common leadership.

Because people won’t open carry when it’s against the law so they don’t get arrested. Unlike ICE, they’re following the law.

Ok, so don’t look for an AI response? Sure, Google censoring results is shit, google NOT censoring results about the same query about Biden is even shittier, but you still get search results about the question.

My friend, this isn’t about how to build a car, and I don’t know why you’re trying to force it. This is about spending money if you have it and want to spend it on something relatively unknown. It’s what OP asked for. Not a lesson on building an 8 second track car.

How decoupled stocks are from reality or value. It’s bizarre.

Haha, yeah I do comment a bit in politics. Here it’s not too bad, I tend to have similar views as many here so the disagreements are the “genocide joe” type more often than not.

Someone disagrees with me.

Someone is pointing out an error I made.

Someone is arguing an exception to prove me wrong.

I made an agreeable statement.

In that order of priority.

The point of this was what people might not know about that you can buy if you’ve got 6 figure $ burning a hole in your pocket.

Not how to build a budget fun AF Honda that will blow up after the Nth overboost.

They can. But not in this case.