My brother really wanted me to play WoW back in the day. I played for an entire weekend, and made it to I think level 10, and reached a spot where I found some soft banana bread, but I was not yet battle-hardened enough to eat the soft banana bread. That's after buying it in a box, paying for access, and playing pretty hard.
The next weekend, I played the newly released Bioshock for the first time, and it was a reminder that single player games are paced so much faster than MMOs.
I've played plenty of JRPGs too, and even those are much quicker unless you're doing some crazy challenge run. And you're not paying a monthly fee for the privilege.
The next weekend, I played the newly released Bioshock for the first time, and it was a reminder that single player games are paced so much faster than MMOs.
I've played plenty of JRPGs too, and even those are much quicker unless you're doing some crazy challenge run. And you're not paying a monthly fee for the privilege.
https://web.archive.org/web/20251208150222/https://www.theatlantic.com/health/2025/12/prasad-memo-covid-vaccine-deaths/685175/
It's been a long time since COVID now, but after seeing how the vaccine affected myself and many people I know, the idea that some people including kids would die given the biological effects seems self-evident.
I took it and ended up sleeping for a full 24 hours. My dad took it and got so sick he had to quit his (short term) job because he wasn't going to be healthy enough to come to work. Quite a lot of people said it hit them really hard. That's not normal for a vaccine. Most of us take or have taken many vaccines and only see mild side effects. To have something hit people this hard absolutely implies that a small number of people could be hit even harder.
The comment that showing evidence is a danger to evidence based medicine is self-defeating. You don't do evidence-based public medicine if you disregard evidence, what you've got there is religion, and a shitty religion at that. "Bow before Brand X, for it shall deliver you from evil!"
It's been a long time since COVID now, but after seeing how the vaccine affected myself and many people I know, the idea that some people including kids would die given the biological effects seems self-evident.
I took it and ended up sleeping for a full 24 hours. My dad took it and got so sick he had to quit his (short term) job because he wasn't going to be healthy enough to come to work. Quite a lot of people said it hit them really hard. That's not normal for a vaccine. Most of us take or have taken many vaccines and only see mild side effects. To have something hit people this hard absolutely implies that a small number of people could be hit even harder.
The comment that showing evidence is a danger to evidence based medicine is self-defeating. You don't do evidence-based public medicine if you disregard evidence, what you've got there is religion, and a shitty religion at that. "Bow before Brand X, for it shall deliver you from evil!"
I think it's particularly funny because if you think about the things going on in 2014, basically none of them including gamergate are something that are actively brought up on a regular basis by any faction of the right. However, even though it has been 12 years, it's like the left's Pearl harbor. It's like their 9/11.
A bunch of incompetent gaming journalists having conflicts of interest because they were all banging the same incompetent "game developer" is treated like this generational wound that must be brought up like the Holocaust for all time.
When you get right down to it, the concept that people need to be careful about conflicts of interest when they start sleeping with individuals they are doing new stories about is entirely uncondual, it is basic journalistic ethics. The way that it got reframed about misogyny doesn't actually make a whole lot of sense. It wouldn't be any more correct if female game journos started falling over a male developer that they were having sex with, or if everyone in the situation were gay and a bunch of males started amping each other up after secretly having sex. In fact, you can take sex entirely out of the equation, You're typically not supposed to write new stories about someone you were related to, or friend, or occurrence or former employer, at least not without making the conflict of interest publicly known.
So the fact that it was a basic journalistic standard basically forever really speaks to the fact that this was about individuals who thought they had a monopoly on narrative creating it like the Holocaust the moment that someone other than them formed a narrative. Which is really silly.
And let's say that gamer gate was actually entirely wrong and all of the facts brought forward by the ex-boyfriend were self-serving and wrong. Even then there's nothing to discuss. Okay, there's a nasty breakup and a guy started slinging accusations around. That seems like something that ought to be very straightforward to resolve without turning it into a Pearl harbor, Even if a bunch of people on the internet got on board.
A bunch of incompetent gaming journalists having conflicts of interest because they were all banging the same incompetent "game developer" is treated like this generational wound that must be brought up like the Holocaust for all time.
When you get right down to it, the concept that people need to be careful about conflicts of interest when they start sleeping with individuals they are doing new stories about is entirely uncondual, it is basic journalistic ethics. The way that it got reframed about misogyny doesn't actually make a whole lot of sense. It wouldn't be any more correct if female game journos started falling over a male developer that they were having sex with, or if everyone in the situation were gay and a bunch of males started amping each other up after secretly having sex. In fact, you can take sex entirely out of the equation, You're typically not supposed to write new stories about someone you were related to, or friend, or occurrence or former employer, at least not without making the conflict of interest publicly known.
So the fact that it was a basic journalistic standard basically forever really speaks to the fact that this was about individuals who thought they had a monopoly on narrative creating it like the Holocaust the moment that someone other than them formed a narrative. Which is really silly.
And let's say that gamer gate was actually entirely wrong and all of the facts brought forward by the ex-boyfriend were self-serving and wrong. Even then there's nothing to discuss. Okay, there's a nasty breakup and a guy started slinging accusations around. That seems like something that ought to be very straightforward to resolve without turning it into a Pearl harbor, Even if a bunch of people on the internet got on board.
lol I made a joke about not being on epstein island because I wasn't invited, turns out Elon dodged a bullet because neither was he. (big oof considering it's a bad look when he was saying Trump would be in there)
A lot of people lately have been mythologizing physical media, acting is if having with physical media automatically means you will always have access to your thing.
If you want physical media instead of DRM-Free media because you think that means you'll get to keep your thing, you don't understand what DRM is.
DRM, or digital rights management, is the mechanism included in something that allows The original publisher to enforce whatever they are claiming as their digital rights. That enforcement mechanism by the way doesn't necessarily even have to be legal.
For example, in the 2000s there are many physical discs you could buy with video games on them, and today if you had the same computer you installed it on that then and the same desk you still running back on back then, you cannot install the game because the DRM servers have long since shut down and it is required to phone home before installation.
By contrast, DRM free media can be fully digital, and in spite of not having an embodied piece of physical media, there is no technological mechanism by which The owner of the copyright that media can enforce their license.
Because DRM-Free means you don't just have a license that can somehow expire, it means you have a copy of the thing with no restrictions. Software can still be licensed to you, and hypothetically a licensing agreement could take away your license to use that software, but without the enforcement mechanism, there is no way to enforce a license that has been revoked. People who still have mp3s should understand this intuitively, because they can take their file and play it on their computer, or play it on their phone, or played in their car, and Even if technically there was these paper somewhere saying they weren't supposed to, such a license would have to be enforced in court rather than using type of technological means.
Back in the 2000s, physical media with DRM existed. You'd buy a game on CD or DVD, and it would phone home to Central servers, only allowing you to install a limited number of times. Sony installed root kits in people's PC if you installed their DRM enabled physical media, hacking your computer and limiting what you can do with your CD or your software.
Contrast with GOG, which lets you install games anywhere any time without an internet connection and without restrictions, and MP3s, which can be played on any mp3 player without restrictions.
If you gave me the option of a CD with a securom DRM secured copy of a program or a digital download of a DRM-Free copy of the same program, I'd pick the latter 100 times out of 100 because I can have the DRM-free version forever and there's nothing anyone can do about it because there's no enforcement mechanism to remove my access to my media remotely.
If you want physical media instead of DRM-Free media because you think that means you'll get to keep your thing, you don't understand what DRM is.
DRM, or digital rights management, is the mechanism included in something that allows The original publisher to enforce whatever they are claiming as their digital rights. That enforcement mechanism by the way doesn't necessarily even have to be legal.
For example, in the 2000s there are many physical discs you could buy with video games on them, and today if you had the same computer you installed it on that then and the same desk you still running back on back then, you cannot install the game because the DRM servers have long since shut down and it is required to phone home before installation.
By contrast, DRM free media can be fully digital, and in spite of not having an embodied piece of physical media, there is no technological mechanism by which The owner of the copyright that media can enforce their license.
Because DRM-Free means you don't just have a license that can somehow expire, it means you have a copy of the thing with no restrictions. Software can still be licensed to you, and hypothetically a licensing agreement could take away your license to use that software, but without the enforcement mechanism, there is no way to enforce a license that has been revoked. People who still have mp3s should understand this intuitively, because they can take their file and play it on their computer, or play it on their phone, or played in their car, and Even if technically there was these paper somewhere saying they weren't supposed to, such a license would have to be enforced in court rather than using type of technological means.
Back in the 2000s, physical media with DRM existed. You'd buy a game on CD or DVD, and it would phone home to Central servers, only allowing you to install a limited number of times. Sony installed root kits in people's PC if you installed their DRM enabled physical media, hacking your computer and limiting what you can do with your CD or your software.
Contrast with GOG, which lets you install games anywhere any time without an internet connection and without restrictions, and MP3s, which can be played on any mp3 player without restrictions.
If you gave me the option of a CD with a securom DRM secured copy of a program or a digital download of a DRM-Free copy of the same program, I'd pick the latter 100 times out of 100 because I can have the DRM-free version forever and there's nothing anyone can do about it because there's no enforcement mechanism to remove my access to my media remotely.
HITLER WAS RIGHT
On at least 51% of the questions on the test, and thus has gained his certification.
On at least 51% of the questions on the test, and thus has gained his certification.
Now there is a guy who looks like his great-grand Pappy was drinking tea and eating bangers and mash on his break in Sheffield before going off to make more of the best steel in the world so the UK could build tanks to fight the Kaiser.
https://news.sky.com/story/doomsday-clock-moves-closer-to-midnight-what-does-it-mean-12794884
This story shows that technocrats can be idiots.
"The worst is closer to destruction than ever before" Really? You think so?
Closer to destruction than during the height of the cold war, when massive and new nuclear arsenals that don't even exist anymore were pointed at real targets and could have taken off at any moment? There were about 65,000 nuclear bombs, and today there's a tenth of that.
Closer than when Mao, who killed 100 million of his own people, who even the Soviets were terrified of, got his hands on nuclear weapons?
No, that's stupid. In fact, in a multi-polar world, the risks to our future go down instead of up because you don't have everyone pointing planet busters at everyone else.
It's also stupid because structurally we're not the sort of planet that goes to nuclear war at the moment. Our leaders are ancient and entrenched, our societies lack vital energy, around the world nobody really wants to go to war for the sake of their nation, and most of the people alive wouldn't be able to fight any wars that happen because they're too old or too fat or too nuts.
Wars are fought typically because vital societies have momentum that drives these things forward. The world wars occurred because of a young, vital, and dynamic set of societies that were excited to go out and fight for nations they cared about. Nationalism was still an important thing. Can you have wars with smaller professional armies? Sure, and they'll be smaller wars. The sort of total war that leads to global annihilation don't break out at times like this, instead you have shallower conflicts like the 30 years war which happened at a time of a less vital Europe and it wasn't anything like world wars.
Don't make the mistake of assuming I'm saying that wars need to be popular to occur. A lot of people on the ground didn't want the world wars to happen. What I'm saying is that the people of a nation are a kinetic force, and that force has a certain energy. If your battery is dead, you might be able to activate the starter, you might even be able to turn over the engine, but you probably won't be able to start the car without help, and even then you'll need to be careful because if you stall you might not be able to start again.
For empirical proof, look at Ukraine. Russia started a war in continental Europe. In a powder keg moment in history, that could have led to a world war. Instead, it's a regional conflict with conditional materiel support from others, not an all-out total war with everyone preparing to march on Moscow.
If China hits Taiwan, It too will likely remain a regional conflict with support from other regions, not a world war. Unlike World War 2, you don't have an imperial Japan with a fire lit under their asses by Commdore Perry's black ships and success in World War 1. India isn't part of the British Empire. And embarassingly, total war with China will result in the tide coming out with respect to global trade, and most countries will be discovered to have lost their swimsuits.
Could there be wars in the near future? Absolutely. Many nations are facing the final days of having any real vitality and in that late stage many are lashing out hoping to successfully eke out a few concessions before a long dormant era of rebuilding to help achieve additional stability. That's a sick cornered animal lashing out at a predator, rather than a predator in its prime on the hunt.
It's important to remember, history didn't start in 1938. We've been here before, and it wasn't nice, but it wasn't anything like the events that could end the world.
As for whether other forms of societal collapse could happen, I wrote a damn book about societal collapse, but this isn't the "societal collapse by demographics" clock, it's the "doomsday clock" that predicts the end of the world. We're inside the former, we're nowhere near the latter. Even if Russia dropped a nuke on Ukraine today, we're not getting a nuclear World War 3.
Even if we got that nuclear World War 3, I ran the math once, and if the US and russia used every nuke they have today at the same time, it'd be about the same as the volcanic eruption that caused the year without summer in the 1800s. Bad, but we survived the year without summer. In addition, that's a worst-case scenario, because volcanos can use that event to harm the climate with a very high efficiency that nuclear bombs (particularly distributed globally rather than in one spot) aren't capable of. As for fallout, in Japan people still live in Nagasaki and Hiroshima so fallout wouldn't be a perpetual issue.
We're also in an era where we're actually the most aware and the most proactive of environmental issues ever. In the 1950s, it was still considered totally acceptable in both the western world and the communist world to utterly destroy the environment. In America, rivers were so disgusting you'd get sick just standing next to them. In The USSR, the soviet union caused some of the largest environmental disasters in human history. Meanwhile, today even the Chinese are trying to clean up their act under intense pressure from their populations. Are we using more carbon today? Depends where you are, but in many countries the total carbon use is down and as the population declines the energy use will also decline. We're not in the same level of danger environmentally as we arguably were in the 1950s and 1960s either.
And to be clear about something, I don't need absolute confidence to be able to make this criticism, I just need confidence that their absolute confidence is misplaced. Big difference. I don't need to say everything is going to be fine and nothing bad will ever happen to say that it's stupid to attack a measurement indicating that we are predictably closer to the end of the world at this moment than ever before. An awful lot of bad things can happen -- including nuclear war or climate change -- without invoking doomsday.
This story shows that technocrats can be idiots.
"The worst is closer to destruction than ever before" Really? You think so?
Closer to destruction than during the height of the cold war, when massive and new nuclear arsenals that don't even exist anymore were pointed at real targets and could have taken off at any moment? There were about 65,000 nuclear bombs, and today there's a tenth of that.
Closer than when Mao, who killed 100 million of his own people, who even the Soviets were terrified of, got his hands on nuclear weapons?
No, that's stupid. In fact, in a multi-polar world, the risks to our future go down instead of up because you don't have everyone pointing planet busters at everyone else.
It's also stupid because structurally we're not the sort of planet that goes to nuclear war at the moment. Our leaders are ancient and entrenched, our societies lack vital energy, around the world nobody really wants to go to war for the sake of their nation, and most of the people alive wouldn't be able to fight any wars that happen because they're too old or too fat or too nuts.
Wars are fought typically because vital societies have momentum that drives these things forward. The world wars occurred because of a young, vital, and dynamic set of societies that were excited to go out and fight for nations they cared about. Nationalism was still an important thing. Can you have wars with smaller professional armies? Sure, and they'll be smaller wars. The sort of total war that leads to global annihilation don't break out at times like this, instead you have shallower conflicts like the 30 years war which happened at a time of a less vital Europe and it wasn't anything like world wars.
Don't make the mistake of assuming I'm saying that wars need to be popular to occur. A lot of people on the ground didn't want the world wars to happen. What I'm saying is that the people of a nation are a kinetic force, and that force has a certain energy. If your battery is dead, you might be able to activate the starter, you might even be able to turn over the engine, but you probably won't be able to start the car without help, and even then you'll need to be careful because if you stall you might not be able to start again.
For empirical proof, look at Ukraine. Russia started a war in continental Europe. In a powder keg moment in history, that could have led to a world war. Instead, it's a regional conflict with conditional materiel support from others, not an all-out total war with everyone preparing to march on Moscow.
If China hits Taiwan, It too will likely remain a regional conflict with support from other regions, not a world war. Unlike World War 2, you don't have an imperial Japan with a fire lit under their asses by Commdore Perry's black ships and success in World War 1. India isn't part of the British Empire. And embarassingly, total war with China will result in the tide coming out with respect to global trade, and most countries will be discovered to have lost their swimsuits.
Could there be wars in the near future? Absolutely. Many nations are facing the final days of having any real vitality and in that late stage many are lashing out hoping to successfully eke out a few concessions before a long dormant era of rebuilding to help achieve additional stability. That's a sick cornered animal lashing out at a predator, rather than a predator in its prime on the hunt.
It's important to remember, history didn't start in 1938. We've been here before, and it wasn't nice, but it wasn't anything like the events that could end the world.
As for whether other forms of societal collapse could happen, I wrote a damn book about societal collapse, but this isn't the "societal collapse by demographics" clock, it's the "doomsday clock" that predicts the end of the world. We're inside the former, we're nowhere near the latter. Even if Russia dropped a nuke on Ukraine today, we're not getting a nuclear World War 3.
Even if we got that nuclear World War 3, I ran the math once, and if the US and russia used every nuke they have today at the same time, it'd be about the same as the volcanic eruption that caused the year without summer in the 1800s. Bad, but we survived the year without summer. In addition, that's a worst-case scenario, because volcanos can use that event to harm the climate with a very high efficiency that nuclear bombs (particularly distributed globally rather than in one spot) aren't capable of. As for fallout, in Japan people still live in Nagasaki and Hiroshima so fallout wouldn't be a perpetual issue.
We're also in an era where we're actually the most aware and the most proactive of environmental issues ever. In the 1950s, it was still considered totally acceptable in both the western world and the communist world to utterly destroy the environment. In America, rivers were so disgusting you'd get sick just standing next to them. In The USSR, the soviet union caused some of the largest environmental disasters in human history. Meanwhile, today even the Chinese are trying to clean up their act under intense pressure from their populations. Are we using more carbon today? Depends where you are, but in many countries the total carbon use is down and as the population declines the energy use will also decline. We're not in the same level of danger environmentally as we arguably were in the 1950s and 1960s either.
And to be clear about something, I don't need absolute confidence to be able to make this criticism, I just need confidence that their absolute confidence is misplaced. Big difference. I don't need to say everything is going to be fine and nothing bad will ever happen to say that it's stupid to attack a measurement indicating that we are predictably closer to the end of the world at this moment than ever before. An awful lot of bad things can happen -- including nuclear war or climate change -- without invoking doomsday.
It took me uncomfortably long to realize you were actually talking about horses.
I thought I'd share because I think that's kind of amusing.
I thought I'd share because I think that's kind of amusing.
I'm not sure that the data necessarily bears that out.
Ontario is largely nuclear, and prices are higher than in Manitoba and Quebec which are largely hydroelectric.
Ontario is largely nuclear, and prices are higher than in Manitoba and Quebec which are largely hydroelectric.
The first time I saw that, it was shocking to the conscience.
"Who does your baby want to have sex with?"
Jesus Christ, nobody what's wrong with you?
I have seen paper forms asking the sexual orientation and gender identity of a newborn. Not computer forms, paper. Someone had to design that, had to look at it, and nodded to themselves that this was correct.
"Who does your baby want to have sex with?"
Jesus Christ, nobody what's wrong with you?
I have seen paper forms asking the sexual orientation and gender identity of a newborn. Not computer forms, paper. Someone had to design that, had to look at it, and nodded to themselves that this was correct.
In terms of new kids shows that I just don't think have a culture war angle, I've had no problems with hot wheels: let's race.
I'm thinking it might be related to the fact that Hot Wheels has never been this sort of franchise that you go to if you are trying to achieve power. It's a franchise about cool looking cars. I found that in spite of the fact that there are things that if you wanted to nitpick you could complain about the diversity, but same sort of diversity that you would have seen from an '80s cartoon so who cares, it's just a dumb cartoon for trying to sell toys kids and I'm here for it.
Honestly, trying to sell toys is not a bad thing. I want to buy toys for my son. And the best thing would Hot Wheels is that they're cheap -- you can get them at the dollar store for two bucks, and that's not two freedom dollars, that's two canuckistani kopecs. I bought the game associated with the series on pc, and it's fantastic, I can hand the controller to my son, and he can basically play with one button because it has Auto steering and auto acceleration.
I'm thinking it might be related to the fact that Hot Wheels has never been this sort of franchise that you go to if you are trying to achieve power. It's a franchise about cool looking cars. I found that in spite of the fact that there are things that if you wanted to nitpick you could complain about the diversity, but same sort of diversity that you would have seen from an '80s cartoon so who cares, it's just a dumb cartoon for trying to sell toys kids and I'm here for it.
Honestly, trying to sell toys is not a bad thing. I want to buy toys for my son. And the best thing would Hot Wheels is that they're cheap -- you can get them at the dollar store for two bucks, and that's not two freedom dollars, that's two canuckistani kopecs. I bought the game associated with the series on pc, and it's fantastic, I can hand the controller to my son, and he can basically play with one button because it has Auto steering and auto acceleration.
I finally had to replace the filament holder I printed on my delta kossel (shown in gray) and replaced it with something printed on my Tevo Tornado. Took the chance to make it much wider, and after a failed print of a previous revision I took out a lot of fancy design elements which made it flimsier, and printed it on its side which made it far more robust but also easier to print on a big bed printer like the tornado. I also flipped the orientation.
Central office will be able to ignore crimes with 10, perhaps 1000 times the efficiency!
[User was jailed for this post]
[User was jailed for this post]
You know, the memes are true.
-27 this morning and we're both leaving the house with hoodies on.
-27 this morning and we're both leaving the house with hoodies on.
Even when Martin Luther nailed his criticisms to the church, he was aiming at a constrained and conservative form of Christianity rather than a liberating one.