MudMan

We do “my dick sweats”, for the same thing, which I now realize sounds super gross.

I haven’t faceplanted, but I have punched myself in the headset repeatedly. Turns out looking at things up close is not advisable when your face happens to have an invisible box strapped to it.

Yeah, I keep hearing the “you don’t get how big it is” thing, too.

I get how big it is.

European agriculture workers just reversed EU-wide policy as recently as last week by blocking major roads throughout the continent with tractors. They didn’t even agree with each other (half those guys are pissed at the other guys for being too competitive), and the regulations they opposed were climate protection regulations, among other more reasonable things, so this isn’t necessarily a feel-good story.

But they won.

They didn’t even have to try that hard, honestly. Besides mild traffic jams and some tense standoffs with police it was all pretty mild. And yet politicians across the entire continent, over multiple countries, were terrified of the optics of working class people protesting in loose coordination, especially with right wing parties trying to co-opt their anger.

I get how big it is. The size is not the reason.

Yeah, ok.

I don’t want to speak for the OP, but… I’m guessing that’s what they’re saying.

I mean, this issue is not on the ballot elsewhere. Even conservatives who are actively trying to dismantle public health care won’t dare suggest that they want less public health care. At most they’ll tell you they found ways to invest more and then turn around and give that money to private managers. You certainly broke through the propaganda. I don’t think I’ve spoken to an American anywhere who has made a case for the current health care system. Polls suggest this issue, among other “aren’t Americans weird” stuff are wildly impopular with the actual population.

But I also constantly hear from Americans that it’s impossible to turn it around, that candidates who support these common sense moves are unelectable and that there is nothing they could ever do about it.

That part is what I don’t get. I mean, I’m familiar with elections not going my way, it happens to everybody, but holy crap. There’s a reason why this is not on the ballot elsewhere. You wouldn’t need an election to figure this out. Even in countries with the bare minimum of democratic guarantees and no money you would have the mother of all endless riots under these circumstances.

Me, personally, I’m not so much judgemental of the American public as I am baffled at their defeatism and conformism.

Honestly? The real feeling I get from this is being scared for the future. I do know that there are powerful forces seeing a business opportunity in that status quo that can be exported. And you can see the impetus towards eroding the safety nets here following marching orders from the far right, anarchocapitalist mothership all throughout the world. In some of the countries I’ve lived in there is already a push towards this model, just moderated by the existence of some sort of universal health care. Sure, even the bare minimum of public service care takes a TON of the edge off. Those ER bills are what some of my friends in those places paid for, say, having major surgery or good care while having a baby… but it’s a slippery slope.

Best guess, the left of the democrats in the primaries, for a start.

It’s not that you lack politicians who agree with the changes that are needed, it’s that they are seen as less electable than the guy who did tons of fraud and at least one confirmed rape, somehow. I don’t know that Americans are “bad people”, but the fact that these common sense positions aren’t the default, centrist view across both major parties is baffling.

It’s a clumsy way to put it, but it’s not wrong that the lack of universal consensus around these things in the US is confusing and unreasonable.

Hi, yes, I’m here. The user. Of both, in fact.

Both Bluesky and Mastodon have their quirks and their different cultures. The feature sets of their protocols may also be different, but they sure aren’t relevant to the experience at all, because federation is not a user-facing feature for the vast majority of the social media experience.

Stop cheerleading for social networks. Social networks are not your friends, including Mastodon or the rest of the “fediverse”.

I’m not sure about the digital-only stuff, but the OP is specifically talking about yt-dlp as an alternative to ripping the BRs, and I have to agree that ripping the disks will be easier and yields better results.

Hardware availability is the trickiest part, especially for UHD, but if you have a drive that will deal with the disks you have I certainly wouldn’t bother with the stream rip.

But hey, as a fallback, it’s good to have the option.

For straight revenue, yeah, that’d be right. Technically everything else is a rounding error. But if Epic was one of those single game unicorns like Riot or Rovio this would not make much sense. The synergies of Unreal with both the movie and theme park buisness for Disney seem like a better fit. I mean, assuming the move makes actual sense, Disney is out there talking about game collaborations and it’s not like it’s the first time they’ve spent money randomly and poorly in the gaming business. I just think the investment would make sense even if Fortnite wasn’t in the mix.

And either way it’s being blown out of proportion by the news because they haven’t even bought the company. 1.5B is what? 10% as much as Tencent owns?

I… yeah, what? Disney is what does it? You were cool with Tencent, Sony, Lego, the massive fine for mishandling underage information? Disney. That’s your line.

Alright.

Hah. The framing from normie news is so weird. It’s “bizarrely Disney is investing on Fortnite”, instead of “Disney buys a stake on the people making Unreal, which at this point is like half of their and everybody else’s VFX pipeline”.

I wonder if the gaming news guys will have a better picture or the “Disney Fornite whaaaa?!” angle is what people will take away from this across the board.

You haven’t changed my mind, but now I’m mildly concerned about you and I’m here if you need help.

If the risk is that I’ll have an upset stomach for two days like a toddler coming down from a sugar rush and my knees will also hurt for some reason, then yes, the WHO is right.

I mean… alcohol? You can already buy it easily prepared in all sorts of delicious ways.

Am I not in the spirit of the thing?

Quit drinking if you haven’t. The cost/benefit analysis on that one probably broke a few years ago and you just hadn’t noticed.

Otherwise, meh, do your own thing.

Oh, yeah, for sure. The marketing they did for Guardians was also very bad, it really made it seem of a kind with Avengers, which it really wasn’t.

There will be a lot to say about why Rocksteady is getting to the looter shooter space so late and why it was the exact wrong move for the studio and the franchise. Unless the game is great and everybody buys it, I suppose.

Oh, big difference there, though. Suicide Squad actually IS a looter shooter driven by a wish to chase a business trend from five years to a decade ago. Guardians is a strictly single player Mass Effect-lite narrative action game (which yeah, given the material that fits).

I’d be with you in the argument that it would have been an even better game without the Marvel license, because then they could have skipped trying to rehash bits from the movies’ look and feel, which are consistently the worst parts of the game. But then, without the license it would never have been made, so… make mine Marvel, I guess. Well worth it.

Nah, I’m mostly kidding. About the being my enemy part. The game is, in fact, awesome, and you should fetch it somewhere before the absolute nightmare of licensed music and Disney IP bundled within it makes it unsellable on any digital platform forever.

Seriously, I bought a physical copy of the console version just for preservation, beause if you want to know what will be in the overprized “hidden gem” lists of game collectors in thirty years, it’s that.

Well, then you’re my enemy, because that game is great, Marvel connection or not. In fact it’s a fantastic companion piece ot the third Guardians movie, because they’re both really good at their respective medium but they are pushing radically oppposite worldviews (one is a Christian parable, the other a humanist rejection of religious alienation).

And yeah, holy crap, they made a Marvel game about grief and loss and managing them without turning to religion and bigotry and it was awesome and beautiful and nobody played it and you all suck.

Well, it depends on when they cancelled it and on how much it cost. That thing didn’t sell THAT poorly, but Square, as usual, was aiming way above what’s realistic. Estimates on Steam alone put it above 1 million copies sold. You can assume PS5 was at least as good.

Based on those same estimates it actually outsold Guardians. Which is an absolute travesty and I blame anyone who hasn’t played it personally.