I played the first one as kind of a fluke. It’s absolutely not my typical interest. I usually hate games with punishing resource limits, but some quirk of fate lined things up where I was in the right kind of mood for that one. Absolutely loved it.

Haven’t (and never plan to) played the sequel. Just don’t think I’ll ever be able to top how magical the first one was for me and I was pretty happy with the original ending.

Popularity of robo wasps went up when the president claimed dying in horrible agony was actually a good thing. Several people voluntarily provoked their nests. Others tried keeping them as pets.

I struggle with driving on m&kb. Last time I played I just had a controller off to the side and would switch between them depending on what I was doing.

Yeah, I was surprised at how dextrous their front paws were having grown up with only dogs. Definitely little hands.

This would be funnier without the last panel

Ordered food at Sonic on their app. After I ordered, it popped up with ads for travel, various credit cards, etc. Completely crazy to me that they’re triple dipping on monetization now (sell me food, sell my data and then sell me other shit while trying to sell me food.)

You’re making assumptions that I’m some young kid, naively thinking I can change the world with overly simplistic ‘solutions’.

I’ve been in this career for a decent chunk of time, and, more importantly discussed these issues with others that have been here 40+ years (my company has been around for 100+ years). They feel the same.

You see it over and over again, management makes a short term cost saving decision, gets promoted or leaves to a new company and the rest of the people spend the next 3 years dealing with that decision. Things that used to be fixed in 2-3 days now takes 2-3 weeks. Projects that used to be completed in 4-6 weeks now take 4-6 months, etc.

These are things that I’ve noticed after 15+ years in the job and things that my 40+ year co-workers agree with and things the next two levels of my own management agree with (both 30+ years at the company). Hell, these are things executives I’ve been on better terms with have agreed with in the past (only to get let go after failing to implement culture changes).

My experience with executives is that they don’t necessarily want yes men, but there’s a range of acceptable criticism or feedback that they’ll accept. As long as you’re within that range, it’s fine.

If you try to address fundamental problems that might require real change… well those people tend to get suppressed.

They’ll happily take feedback on meeting structure or project planning or whatever. But try to do a retrospective on what the true longterm costs of their decision to go with the cheap, but unreliable solution and they’ll blackball you.

I guess they’re giving it back to the Native Americans?

I feel like a huge number of franchises were started back in the day, but everything now is just sequels and remasters of old games.

How many of the current biggest AAA titles got their start in the 2005-2015 era vs the number of new franchises in 2015-2025?

Creativity seems to be mostly dead and games all have to be mega hits or they’re considered a failure. There’s also a distinct lack of AA games (the successful of which often later became AAA titles).

AAA games are legitimately worse now than before, but the gulf isn’t as big as people are claiming.

Quiet yes. They’ve gone quiet several times before. But it never results in different actions. They don’t change, they only ever become more circumspect.

It’s how Democrats deluded ourselves that things were turning around and then were so surprised to lose everything. All of the words in the world aren’t going to affect any real change.

I honestly don’t think there’s anything anyone can do to reach these people. I think something is deeply broken in a huge majority of Americans. Either they’re voting for this or they’re too checked out, self absorbed or hopeless to bother to do anything to try to fix it. 2024 revealed just how broken we are.

I’m struggling to believe these articles are anything but pandering to the left. I struggle to believe there’s any significant number of conservatives actually having real second thoughts.

I mean during COVID you had conservatives literally claiming COVID was no big deal as they died. I think that was when I understood just how far gone these people could be. They will happily drink the Kool aid no matter the personal cost to themselves.

So losing their jobs is questionable as to whether or not it’s going to actually result in a different mindset, rather than some fleeting complaints that are forgotten by the next election cycle.

I think for many purposes, regular people just like cool art. We’ve very much become accustomed to a near overwhelming tide of reasonable quality, but ultimately transient media.

‘Content’ has a much lower value than it once did, simply by benefit of sheer quantity. Even ignoring AI, I have access to endless art, music, video content, etc.

AI art is not really different from the non-artist perspective. It’s just accelerating the flow. But do people really even care where their current art comes from in most cases? The average person might download some art for their phone or computer desktop. They’ll be exposed to marketing and cover materials (that they’d have no clue or care about how they’re made), and they might buy some art for their house. Either from a home goods store of cheap, mass production art, or perhaps on a vacation or art fair for something a little more personal. Beyond that, I doubt most even think about it at all. AI art will be largely invisible to them because the human artists already are.

I do think you’ll see a similar surge of ‘human’ art niches like we have for Vinyl collections today. A small subset of people will pursue the story and mystique of hand crafted art, but this will be a drop in the bucket compared to the entire industry. Only a small few will be able to fit into that new niche.

Currently (well in the summers at least) using a noctua fan attached to a length of 6" diameter duct that’s taped to the output of my portable AC unit to put cold air into a windowless room that doesn’t get much air. Works remarkably well to distribute the air even though the duct is pretty long.

Now you’ve got teachers and students fighting over whether or not their paper was written by AI, so students need to jump through hoops trying to prove (or convincingly lie) that they didn’t use AI to write. Which can mean writing in weird ways that don’t ‘feel’ like AI.

Or in the case of software it’s ‘You don’t’ as all the options and customization no longer exist

Also in several games my ability to join friends in-game broke if I turned my profile completely private. As soon as I set it to friends only I could join them again.

Apparently there was a recall on several brands

https://www.fda.gov/food/alerts-advisories-safety-information/fda-alert-concerning-certain-cinnamon-products-due-presence-elevated-levels-lead

This has never occurred historically. What historical period of workers and owners fighting at a large scale

The battle of cripple creek involved shootings and dynamite explosions between workers and mine owners and was only stopped once the governor stepped in and helped negotiate a compromise.

I wasn’t trying to imply anything close to a full on war, but violence was a lot more common in early clashes for worker rights. Protests and strikes much more frequently were backed by violent behavior including several deaths.