Mossy Feathers (They/Them)

This game is already out. Why did we need an update on an announcement for a game that’s already released?

Imo, we should have one, or at most, two Olympic states. They’d be small countries that are more-or-less politically neutral, and instead of sending teams, their purpose would be to host the Summer and/or Winter Olympics. Construction, maintenance and upgrades of the facilities would be paid for by participating countries, as a percentage of their GDP. That way, the hosting country(ies) wouldn’t have to spend billions building the facilities, they get guaranteed tourism every 2~4 years, the facilities get reused, non-hosting countries have a place to measure their penis size, don’t have to spend outrageous sums to build their own facilities (they’re all paying together, after all), don’t have to bulldoze houses or forests, be concerned with water quality, and probably many other bonuses I’m not thinking of.

Bonus points if the facilities are open year-round for Olympians to train at, so that the athletes are more used to the climate, equipment, tracks, trails, etc.

The biggest downside is that hosting the Olympics is prestigious itself and generates a lot of tourism revenue (which in this case, would only be going to the “static” host(s)). It’s a chance for the host country to show off their economic strength, culture (like during the opening ceremonies), and more. You’d have to convince countries that they’re better off without the tourism and chance to flaunt their wealth.

I’d assume they’d be required to pay taxes once they’re old enough to, but I’d be willing to bet that most of them don’t unless they plan to ever actually move to the US.

I wonder how often the IRS actually goes after American citizens who don’t live in the US, especially ones that haven’t traveled to the US in more than 5+ years.

Edit: they might also be completely unaware that they need to pay taxes. If I’m not mistaken, the US is literally the only country in the world that requires you to pay taxes when living abroad. Logically speaking, it makes sense that you wouldn’t have to pay taxes to a country you don’t live in.

That’s fucking dumb. How long ago was that? The antidepressants thing is particularly upsetting. We shouldn’t be turning people away if they’ve ever been on antidepressants (or are currently on antidepressants); I mean, it’s not like we get free government healthcare or anything. I’m sorry you had to deal with that. That sucks.

This. If I’m not mistaken, the system was meant to operate like a hybrid between patents and trademarks. Iirc, things weren’t originally under copyright by default and you had to regularly renew your copyright in order to keep it. Most of the media in the public domain is a result of companies failing to properly claim or renew copyright before the laws were changed. My understanding is that the reason for this was because the intent was to protect you from having your IP stolen while it was profitable to you, but then release said IP into the public domain once it was no longer profitable (aka wasn’t worth renewing copyright on).

Then corpos spent a lot of money rewriting the system and now practically everything even remotely creative is under copyright that’s effectively indefinite.

The 6-3 ruling penned by Trump appointee Amy Coney Barrett in Department of State v. Muñoz held that a citizen has no “fundamental liberty interest in her noncitizen spouse being admitted to the country,” denying a couple’s plea after a U.S. citizen’s husband was denied a visa.

Hold the fuck up, I thought visas were basically guaranteed to those married to US citizens. This seems like a pretty big deal, so why haven’t I heard more about it?

one slice is missing

That looks more like 2~3 slices dude.

My biggest complaint about Sims-likes is that the visual style always looks too serious. It gives me the feeling that whatever I’m going to do with my not-Sims, it’s gonna be something that makes me regret my real life.

You wanna know what I did the last time I played the Sims 2 though? I repeatedly held parties at my Sim’s house and then lured the guests into a room they couldn’t get out of. I also used the moveobjects cheat to collect police cars whenever a cop showed up to shut the party down. By the time I was done I had amassed around 70 urns, many hysterical immortal Sims (Sims with households can’t die while visiting someone’s house in the Sims 2), 4 Police cars and a fire truck.

The Sims has a mischievous air to it that tickles the devil on your shoulder and begs you to listen to them. None of the Sims-likes I’m aware of seem to have the same air.

Edit: now I want to play the Sims again.

'member when conspiracies were relatively harmless like flat earthers and ufologists?

'member when the main source of Christian extremism (in the US) was the Westboro Baptist Church, and most people just laughed at them because no one really took them seriously?

What the fuck happened?

I’m actually very confused because the US 10yrs ago was radically different than the US now. How did everyone completely lose their minds? This is a semi-rhetorical question because I’m aware of some of the contributing factors, it’s just… I feel like somewhere in the past 10-15yrs I slipped sideways into some kind of an alternate reality.

The most extreme Christians I knew didn’t approve of homosexuality, but also weren’t yelling “god hates f*gs” at people for being gay. They believed in a 7-day creation, but didn’t lose their minds and thirst for blood at the sight of Charles Darwin’s Theory of Evolution.

The worst racists I’d met believed in white supremacy, but weren’t cruising around looking for POC to lynch (with the exception of cops, that is). They hated Hispanic people, but mostly kept it to themselves.

Maybe I was just really sheltered, but while it seems like our level of tolerance has grown, the extremes have gotten worse. Like, the graph of tolerance is still going up, but the data point distribution is getting worse.

Edit: to put it another way, my experience growing up in Texas’ suburbs was that people were “tolerant” in a “I don’t like you but I won’t bother you so long as you don’t bother me” kinda way. Not ideal, but not terrible either. Now though, it’s more “I don’t like you and that bothers me, so I’m gonna bother you”.

No. It’s easier to go after the “good guys” than the bad guys because they’re easier to beat. They won’t use all kinds of slimy, underhanded tactics to fuck you over.

Edit: I don’t approve of the lawsuit against valve, but that’s the way of the world. Scummy companies and people have many tools they can use to drag you down to their level.

e;

Rollercoaster Tycoon 1 and 2; Need for Speed 2 and 3; SimCity 3k.

Also, check your monitor properties. Afaik most CRT monitors (not TVs; those run at 60hz/50hz depending on region) are meant to run at 75~85hz. If it’s running at 60hz when it’s meant to run at a higher refresh rate, then that might be why it’s nauseating (my crt has a very noticeable flicker at 60hz, but that goes away at 75hz).

Edit: to expand on this for any late-comers: CRTs work by using an electron gun (aka particle accelerator aka a motherfucking PARTICLE CANNON) to fire an electron beam at red, green and blue phosphors. When the electron hits a phosphor, it emits light based on the color hit. This beam sweeps over the phosphors at a speed dictated by the display’s refresh rate and illuminates the phosphors one-by-one until it has illuminated the entire screen. This is why trying to take a picture or video of a CRT requires you to sync your shutter speed with the CRT. If your shutter isn’t synced then the monitor will appear to be strobing or flickering (because it is, just very, very quickly)

These phosphors have a set glow duration, which varies based on the intended display refresh rate. A refresh rate that is too low will cause the phosphors to dim before the electron beam passes over them, while a refresh rate that’s too high can cause ghosting, smearing, etc because the phosphors haven’t had a chance to “cool off”. TVs are designed to run at 60hz/50hz, depending on the region, and so their phosphors have a longer glow duration to eliminate flickering at their designated refresh rate. Computer monitors, on the other hand, were high-quality tubes and were typically geared for +75hz. The result is that if you run them at 60hz then you’ll get flickering because the phosphors have a shorter glow duration than a TV.

Note: this is a place where LCD/LED panels solidly beat CRTs, because they can refresh the image without de-illuminating the panel, avoiding flicker at low refresh rates.

Edit 2: oh! Also, use game consoles with CRT TVs, not computer monitors. This is because old consoles, especially pre-3d consoles, “cheated” on sprites and took advantage of standard CRT TV resolution to blend pixels. The result is that you may actually lose detail if you play them on a CRT computer monitor or modern display. That’s why a lot of older sprite-based games unironically look better if you use a real CRT TV or a decent CRT emulator video filter.

The alternative explanation is that the employers have investments in corporate real estate and don’t want their investments to lose value. Personally, I think that the the people at the top probably have investments in corporate real estate, while middle managers are the way you describe.

I don’t think the people at the top usually care what the employees are doing so long as they’re making money, and being in the office means they’re keeping corporate real estate prices afloat. As such, being in office makes money for the executives, even if that money isn’t made directly through the company.

Middle managers on the other hand, likely don’t have any significant corporate real estate investments, nor are they as likely get significant bonuses for company productivity. As such, it makes more sense for their motive to be more about control than it is money.

That said, I do know some executives do indeed see employees the way you’ve described them; an infamous example comes to mind about the Australian real estate executive talking about how they needed to bring workers to heel and crash the economy to remind workers that they work for the company and not the other way around. I’m just not sure that many executives actually think about their workers in that much depth. I think if they did then we’d see a stark contrast of very ethical companies and highly abusive companies instead of the mix of workplace cultures we have now; because some ceos would come to the conclusion that a happy worker is a good worker, while others would become complete control freaks.

I’ll be honest, it took me a while to start remembering “they/them”, even for myself. However, now I have the opposite problem, which is that I tend to substitute “they/them” for gendered pronouns. Normally that’s not a problem because most people accept neutral pronouns, but some people can be very picky about their pronouns and then I have to remember that “they/them” can’t be universally applied to everyone.

Nah, most enbys are chill and recognize that pronouns can be easy to forget. You’re just upset that people get annoyed when you repeatedly misgender them.

I wonder if this was a case of someone seeing a “big name” but being clueless about his history and thinking, “I recognize his name, must mean he’s popular.” Then they hired him without vetting because he had a recognizable name and they believed he was therefore popular and “cool”. I mean, I know who Rob Schneider is because I’ve heard his name get thrown around a lot, but I had no idea he was a bigoted piece of shit because I’ve never (knowingly) watched any of his movies, nor do I keep up with celebrity gossip.

That said, it’s really stupid to hire people without vetting them in this day and age because people have become so insane and brainless that you have no clue what they might say when they get up on stage; but 10 years ago I could see you being able to get away with not vetting celebrities. As such, the person/people who approved him might have been +10 years out of touch and/or lazy.

Dave Oshry is outspokenly pro-union.

I’m pretty sure Dave Oshry would find a way to somehow fuck over whatever company tries to acquire New Blood, like employee contracts that give each employee a $5m bonus if the company gets acquired, required to be paid by the acquiring company. He just seems like the kinda guy who’d do that.

Yeah, that’s not happening lol. Politics aside, public transportation is too shit for that and you’ll just get run over if you try to bike anywhere that doesn’t have a bike path/lane.

Yep, but it hasn’t been more than 10yrs since it was last officially supported. It’s only been a few months since they fully ended official support.