Everything I’ve seen is that it used to be super socialist but under new leadership has been moving more and more right and embracing things like removing all brown migrants.

Okay? So a hundred thousand users can drop the service. “You’re just a small drop in the bucket” is the same bullshit mentality used everywhere that has gotten the world into a lot of the problems it’s in now.

If everybody does their small part, it’s done pretty quick. If everyone sits around going “oh, there’s no ethical consumption” and accepted defeat, literally nothing changes.

Unions are built entirely on speed together strong.

Yes don’t make it the only battlefield but if you strongly disagree with the CEO, giving him more money is a problem. There’s no way around that.

Not weighing in on their politics, but yes and they should. It’s called voting with your wallet. Where do you think the CEO gets the money to fund their politics? They don’t work for free. By continuing to use that service it’s tacitly okaying the CEOs choice.

Money is power.

If cryogenics ever really happens like that we’ll start celebrating some form of rebirth day

And Shish Andaz

Honestly I’ve started really evaluating if I’ll ever actually do whatever project the supplies are for and if not getting rid of them (donate, sell, whatever, varies by item).

Will I actually use that piece of scrap? Will I really ever make that thing? Am I ever honestly going to reach for that color/texture? I’ve probably cut my supplies in half doing this, got a few local people into woodworking by parsing things out, and they got to learn on my rejects that cost basically nothing to them. Now I can actually see what I’ve got and do things.

Riot and square too. Like Riot’s business model is one that StopKillingGames recognized would likely get excluded as it’s obvious from the start you only get your purchases while the servers are running. And square has supported their two mmos forever already, everybody knows exactly what they get there.

Shrimp Jesus memes and scams able to dupe even more old people

I think part of it is the presentation though. People in the real world doing deep dives into the esoterica of their favourite topic often do it because they love it, not because of some prize dangled or to escape the dystopia of real life.

If Ready Player One had just wandered through those things and let you spend time with them and see why they’re great it might have had more of that escapist feel to me.

It’s a universe that, if you really want to, you can get obsessed with it. I do agree they are fairly easy reads

Personally that’s exactly what I look for in popcorn (well, honey mustard pretzel) books. Something I can read easily and not have to think about, but if I chose to, there’s more hidden there. I know “popcorn book” is often used to kind of write something off but for me it’s not like that.

I actually read them all along with a friend and we discussed a lot of what was in them, our thoughts about the implications of the stuff (being vague to avoid spoilers for others), how accurate the science actually was (he was a Kerbal nerd and I did jet propulsion sim work ages ago), and what other life might actually look like and different moral frameworks (I’m a utilitarian, and I think he is more deontological so was an interesting discussion).

I just could also see a world where I binged them by a lake in a week and never thought about them again while move on to House of Leaves (which is the exact opposite of a popcorn book and required actual homework).

I literally said they have flaws. Calling them a monopoly is as pointless as your rebuttal and shows a complete lack of critical thinking. Call them out for the actual issues, not made up nonsense. Call them out for their inconsistent content moderation, call them out for their lootboxes, call them out for their caving to payment processors. Just don’t call them out for the thing they aren’t.

For popcorn books I point more to like The Expanse series or something. Quick easy reads, nothing groundbreaking, but still relatively competently done.

I think part of my hatred for Ready Player One is just how many people raved about it as this new amazing book that was the pinnacle of modern sci-fi when a much better example already existed instead of just the vacation book you read it as.

Actually hold up. Why haven’t we gotten a Snow Crash film yet? Dang it Hollywood

Sure, the yacht is only 500 million, that also doesn’t include the 75 meter support yacht he often has sailing with it. Now add in his 4 private jets (roughly $250 million total), his three mansions on an almost private island off of Miami (roughly $240 million total), his roughly $40 million into his Washington DC house, his 30,000 acre ranch, his properties in Beverly Hills and Manhattan, and more I’m probably forgetting about (I know he owns more ranch land than just that 30k acre property, it’s just the most well known since it now hosts his space company). Not even counting clothes (which Bezos is known to have a pricey watch collection despite wearing a “reserved” choice usually), food, and other expenses which definitely add up. That’s a solid billion right there in real things he’s bought.

Sure they can’t tap the full “value” of their net worth, but the more they have, the more they can tap. And it’s a disgusting amount. And they absolutely treat it as cash equivalent.

My point is you’re arguing irrelevant semantics. They’re out buying $500 million dollar superyachts. That’s close enough to enough of their net worth being real money to make the distinction irrelevant.

No it’s just straight up lazy and leading people to believe ChatGPT is out there solving archeological problems and is actually valuable. Just call it machine learning and go. Most non tech people won’t care, and they won’t keep having that association reinforced.

Go try and get an interest free loan from the bank.
Go “earn” a billion dollars in stock and try again.

I guarantee you’ll have real money the second time. Sure they don’t sit on cash but billionaires absolutely tap into that stock as equity and use it like cash. Many vehicles for doing so are well documented

Getting real tired of everyone calling everything AI these days. Machine learning doesn’t mean AI

Offices also usually have computers and other things adding a not insignificant amount to that heat.

I seriously don’t get this constant “Valve is a monopoly, end them” bull crap. Yes they’re a business. Yes they make money. Sure they’ve got flaws we should tackle. But they aren’t out there trying to shut itch.io down or using legislation to stop you from hosting the game yourself. GOG and Epic aren’t as popular because they don’t provide a strong enough product to pull people away.

Mr Walken, boldly going where, no man, has gone before.

(In my head I’m hearing Walken give a Shatner impersonation)