Pretty amazing what humans can accomplish when they want to work together. Especially when the incentive is valuable stuff underground.

No no, Brazil, you’re failing to understand how hegemony works. You see, we aren’t colonizing you, you’re independent. No imperialism here. But if you do something we don’t like…well, let’s just say you should do what we like.

I dunno, if it were Hbomberguy talking about YouTube plagiarism for four hours I’d watch it.

Depends entirely on the story being told. All can be impactful.

Games where the main character is a blank slate can allow you to build meaningful relationships and aspects to your character, but it takes a lot more work from the devs to flesh out those story branches. When done well, it’s excellent. Mass Effect did a good job with this. Skyrim is an example where it’s well done but with less of a rigid framework and therefore less specific handling by the story.

Games that have a specific character but still allow you to shape their path can be beautiful. The ending of Red Dead Redemption 2 has audio callbacks to important decisions you made during the game that shaped who your version of Arthur Morgan was, and it brought tears to my eyes.

And games where the decisions are set in stone and the character development is entirely in the hands of the writer, director, and actor, like a movie, can still be phenomenal. God of War (2018) and Ragnarok are excellent examples.

Like Mary’s bolt-on fake tits.

Along with all the other examples listed here:

The Bear

Also wtf is the “Abused child forgive abusive parent and reunite happily ever after” trope, fuck that shit. Abusers do not deserve forgiveness.

No, but depending on circumstances and the work the abuser is willing to put into changing themself and making things as right as they can, forgiveness can be earned.

“Sort of” because it isn’t a lawnmower, it’s possessing a lawnmower.

“But yeah” because that’s splitting hairs. 🤣

I love that San Francisco (NorCal) and LA (SoCal) are swapped.

(And also that NYC doesn’t actually include NYC.)

Well sort of. But yeah.

Oh, the article is from Popular Mechanics? So we can just ignore it entirely then.

I don’t know when it happened, but Popular Mechanics seems like it’s just, “Bullshit to make you open our article” now.

Important thing to remember about the “console wars.”

Other than the Nintendo Wii (iirc), most consoles sell at a loss at the beginning of the generation. They eventually turn a profit on console sales, but console sales aren’t the point.

Game sales are.

When each console was its own very specific architecture and games needed to be designed specifically for them, console sales matter a lot because that’s how you’d sell games.

But now that architectures are similar (if not the same), cross-compilation has become easier than ever. It’s why you see Sony finally releasing first party titles on PC.

Microsoft knows full well that their console sales aren’t great, but that’s okay for them. Their PC sales are. Many of their titles sell on Steam. And they sell some of their titles on PlayStation.

They’ll continue to make some form of console because without it they lose out on millions of Game Pass subscriptions from people who don’t want to make the initial investment in a gaming PC, or deal with the complexity, but their goal of making that next console more and more like a PC fits perfectly in their model.

It’s a shame the Series X has sold so poorly, it’s a great console, but I doubt Microsoft is too worried about “losing” the console wars to Sony. The game has changed.

Oh damn, really? Guess I’m switching adblockers! 🤣

There are a number of adblockers for iOS, but you are correct, uBlock Origin is not one of them.

Same question to you as I posed to the other poster:

Why aren’t you using an adblocker on your phone? They are easily implemented on both Android and iOS (as long as you’re willing to use Safari as your browser on iOS).

How are you not using an adblocker on your phone?

I know Firefox on Android (and other browsers) support adblockers. On iOS if you want to block ads without using a DNS to block them I think you’re stuck with Safari, but you’re using Safari to render them regardless so it’s not a big deal. Still, you can block mobile ads.

Also

*it’s

the end being neigh and all

And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him, and the horse said, “the end is neigh!”

(Neigh is what a horse says. The end is nigh. 😉)

My degrees are in music

Sometimes I wish I had better training. I grew up on Suzuki violin, but I never really studied theory. I survive on talent rather than skill, and am very thankful for the skill of those around me!

People think singers aren’t good musicians as a rule and that’s total garbage.

It is wild to me the way some of the orchestral musicians treat the chorus. Most of them are friendly and complimentary, but some of them sure seem to think we’re beneath them. Could just be that they’re not very socially adept, I suppose.

We sing some really difficult stuff as a chorus and you have to know what your note sounds like before you sing it; you can’t rely on just knowing the fingering for your instrument.

And this can be so terrifying for some entrances!

It’s so much fun but also a great mental challenge. I’m thankful to have it in my life as my intellectual musical outlet.

I agree 100%.

Not really sure, but I’ll probably join what I find.

My sister was in a local youth chorus when I came home from college, and told me about the adult version. I found out when auditions were, tried out, got in, and have been loving it ever since!

I had sung in church choirs growing up, but now regret very much not singing during high school and college. A lot of my fellow choir people have great memories of singing in school choirs.

Turns out choirs are a great way to meet a significant other. Other than my wife and I, there are several married couples who met in this chorus (including a couple of married men)! As I tell guys looking to meet people: if you can carry a tune, have a vague understanding of music notation, and live near a medium or large city, you can probably find a volunteer choir. There are a lot of them, they always need people (especially tenors and basses), and are often full of very intelligent and interesting women, some of whom are probably single. 😂