I’ll be a lot more open to comparing Valve with Amazon when I hear reports of Valve employees pissing in bottles

Steam also provides value by acting as an intermediary.

There were 21,503 games released on Steam last year. How the hell is a consumer supposed tk make informed purchasing decisions with all that? Steam is a discovery platform which connects a game with the individuals most likely to buy that game.

It is also a central launcher to organize and manage libraries, including non-steam games. It’s easy to move games between drives, and to use the various library tools to pick out what I want to play.

Then there’s Proton, a completely free comlatability layer for Linux that has allowed me to mostly stop using Windows.

There’s the Steam Workshop, which is far and away my preferred method to mod games. It’s so much easier to click a button to add a mod tk Cities Skylines or Civ 6 than it is to fuck around with Nexus Mods and a mod manager for Skyrim.

Steam is a centralized location for support from developers. It also is convenient tk keep track of updates.

Steam Remote Play is probably the single most umpactful thing to my gaming in the past decade. I just need my 1 gaming desktop and I find myself playing on my Shield in my living room, my phone in bed, my tablet on my exercise bike, my Steam Deck on the porch, or even over at my friend’s house on an old laptop. All for free, when I’ve never even be able to get Moonlight or Sunshine to work at all in my desktop.

Steam has social features like friends lists, chat, and even voice, which is relevant with how shitty Discord has been as a company lately. Support for family sharing and multiplayer is phenomenal.

It is not like Steam is just pocketing a bunch of money and not doing anything. They beat out not just their legitimate competitors, but even piracy, because they provide better value for the consumer. They do a lot of tasks that publishers otherwise would have to handle themselves, saving them costs.

And I’m sure there are more features that I’m forgetting kr that I don’t bother with, but other people find valuable.

I do think they should be heavily regulated, but there hasn’t really been much to regulate with them. They had a minor lawsuit in Australia early on relating to the verbiage displayed about refund policy. I don’t like loot boxes, but my solution is… I don’t buy them, and usually I don’t even buy games with them.

Steam was launched in 2003.

By that point the ships had already sailed. You didn’t own software, and micro transactions already existed. Steam did not “bypass” copyright laws- the facilitated a storefront that sold based on already established and litigated law.

This goes back tk the 1960’s with the origin of computers, when they were gigantic. Manufacturers like IBM would lease the hardware to institutions that used it, and the software was just included for free. This practice ended because of antitrust lawsuits in 1969, which led to IBM charging for software seperstely.

It’s funny you mentioned Apple, because one of the foundational cases of software copyright law was 1983’s Apple vs Franklin case that ruled against a company making Apple II clones, who argued that machines readable code was similar to machinery designs and thus not subject to copyright law. 20 years before Steam existed.

But I guess you can just ahead and make things up on the internet to jump aboard a hate train.

I’ve literally never seen any of these so-called “simps”

Like, the internet is a big place and I’m sure some of them exist, but you could make that argument about any view at all. I see way more hatred for these alleged simps than the simps themselves.

Steam, and Valve, operate in a capitalist system. They’ve been successful. They are similar to a handful of other companies, like Costco, that seem to understand that in order for capitalism to be sustainable, corporations need tk govern themselves and show restraint. They need to focus not on merely achieving profit for ownership this quarter, but on establishing long-term and stable business relationships with all of their stakeholders. Customers, emplpyees, suppliers, governments, lenders, the planet itself.

The biggest failure of capitalism is that the system does not incentivize for any of this. Which is why such corporations are so rare.

I started last year, for several reasons. Most of which werr related to my wife and I creating a polycule with another couple a year earlier. After 1 year in I did some evaluation and realized I needed to make some changes, and journaling was an answer for a lot of those.

1. Memory. I’m almost certainly on the autistic spectrum, and for most of my life I’ve had a remarkably good memory. Not “photographic”, and I known better than to trust any human memory too much, but in general I was pretty good at remembering details. I am also very introverted. I like to spend time alone, reflecting on the last couple of days and solidifying my memories in meditation.

Being in a polycule means that I both have much less time for that meditation and much more stuff to remember. I also was a mild THC user before, mostly for my knee pain or jjsy because getting high on occasion is fun. But ibstatted leaning on it more heavily to deal with the stress of constant socialization.

So when I found myself in conversations remembering that I had been told things, but unable to remember what they were. Like my girlfriend’s home town or my boyfriend’s favorite Zelda game. Not stuff they even necessarily expected me to remember, but stuff I felt bad for forgetting.

2. Validation and evaluation. One of the establishing philosophies of the polycule we talked about up-front was that we woukd still prioritize our respective marriages. We were all established adults and homeowners with no children- this wasn’t a full joining-of-households or roomates situation. Last summer I started to feel like my wife wasn’t spending much time with me though. I started journaling and after a few months found that, sure enough, we had pretty much stopped doing all of the things the two of us used to do together (playing videogames, watching TV and movies ,etc). It is not at all that I minded her spending time with the other people, but when she WAS home with me she woukd just lay on the couch reading, sleeping, scrolling Instagram, or playing Stardew Valley.

My wife also has a medical condition that derailed her career, so a while ago we decided it made more sense for her to stop working and be a homemaker. So I became the sole income earner, and she took over the chores we used to split(laundry, cooking, dishes, cleaning, grocery shopping, etc). I would still contribute on occssion: I am not some boomer stereotype of a man who doesn’t know how a laundry machine works, and I like to cook on occasion. But as she spent more and more time with our girlfriend and boyfriend she also did less and less of those chores. It led to a lot of Saturday mornings, which are supposed to be so e relaxing time off work for me, but instead I need to spend time cleaning or scooping the litter or getting groceries because she didn’t do it, and with our gf & bf coming over that night I want the house to be respectable.

I FELT all of these things, and discussed them with her a little bit, but journaling gave me the confidencd to talk to my wife about it, provide details, and help her to see what she was doing too. When I said that we never did anything together anymore, her first reaction was “wait didn’t we just watch that TV show like a week or two ago?”. And because of journaling I was able to say “that was 5 months ago”.

3. Working through feelings. For most of my life I have done this without needing to write anything down. I would just spend some time alone and, well, think. Let the thoughts and feelings flow naturally and sort them out. But with so much less time to myself I wanted to take a more direct and active approach. I still think I prefer my natural approach- doing it through journalling feels forced and rushed. But its better than just struggling.

4. Monitoring health. I weighed 207lbs when we started this polycule, and now I’m down to 161. Largely due to a couple stints of low-carb dieting.

Also, not to get too graphic but group sex is very different from duo or solo. So having a record of how things have gone and how I’ve felt about things has been nice.

I should also note that for the first 6 months, I just logged narratively. I tried to remember to write down important things, tried to predict what my future self might want to go back and check later. Using keywords I would know to search for (digital is better for me- I use Joplin). After 6 months, I decided to pull out some key measurables and use a separate app to log those. My weed and alcohol use, exercise, and sexual activity.

I don’t think motherboard manufacturers are askign that question. I think they’re asking “why aren’t the RAM manufacturers making enough RAM? Why aren’t the GPU manufacturers making enough GPUs?”

Consumer case manufacturers and power supply manufacturers too. These few oligopolies on key components are screwing over more than just their own consumers.

I woukd just like to contrast this with the opposite: the people who think the highways are a big race. The people with the constant need to chase down and pass an car they can see in front of them. The people who speed up or get offended if another car behind them closes in on them or passes.

It’s exhausting to share the road with those people, and even more exhausting to be a passenger.

Both versions (original + Special Edition) were among the first games I installed on the Deck when I got it, and habe stayed installed for years since. I still go back and play one or the other a bit every couple months.

The only issue I can remember is just dealing with the stupid launcher screen before you get into the actual title screen. I think I might have had to change the launch options for one of them to be able to access the graphics settings?

Interestingly, the original version is still listed as Playable even though tbr Special Edition is Unsupported.

See interesting article link to research paper Sample size is <100 students at one college

Like, on a certain level I get it. I just get frustrated that so much of my time gets wasted on looking into this stuff. And I have so many conversations with other people I know who ONLY read the pop-science article and not the actual paper, or they read the paper but just skip to the juicy bits.

I don’t mean to be out here defending credit scores as a concept, but mine never dropped. Not when I paid off individual student loan accounts, not when the US Federal loans came due after the pandemic pause and I paid them off in one lump sum either. Not when I paid off mybcsr loan either.

Technically the 3 companies that do these each have their own proprietary blend, but it is generally accepted that there are 5 C’s to credit. Character, capacity, capital, collateral, and conditions (“Character” woukd be better described as “history” but that ruins the memnonic).

Which one of these would be negatively impacted by paying off a student loan? None of them! In fact, it improves your Character to pay off a loan successfully, and it improves your capacity to reduce your monthly minimum payments. For stuff like a car loan, paying that off improves your Collateral.

Every single time I have met anyone claiming that paying off a debt hurt their credit score, their story falls apart when I start asking questions. Oh it was actually not them, but a friend of a friend of a friend. Or maybe they also got in a fender Bender and added $3k to their credit card balance that month. Or paying off the debt and the decline in credit score were seperated by months.

What CAN happen is that some accounts only report credit history upon closure. My wife used to work for an “alternative energy supplier” where this was the case. Due to state protections they could not turn off electricity during the winter. People would rack up electric bills for 4 months without paying, then get their electric shut off and suddenly see a huge drop on their credit score out of nowhere. I have heard similar stories of landlords not reporting late rent payments for years until the tenant moves out. This was all years ago though so I’m nkt even sure if that’s true anymore.

Oh you’re just shifting the conversation towards violence against women in particular. Ignoring violence against men and using that ad a cover fke your own thinly veiled racist dogwhistles. Cool stuff.

Poor men, because the rich men have written tbe was so that their violence is not considered criminal.

That is an important part of being a responsible consumer, yes

The go-to example I always think of for 2nd person is Ratchet and Clank: Up Your Arsenal, the boss battle against the Tyhrranoid Mother. You cycle through phases of the boss, and one shifts the camera’s perspective to the targeting system of the boss, while you still control Ratchet.

I’m interested, but I think the Dev woukd need to find a way to incentivize “normal” driving.

I think back to my youth playing Driver on the PS1, and it was a lot of fun just… Driving around. Exploring the world. Even dealing with traffic was fun when I was only a kid who could nkt drive myself.

I tried tk do similar in GTA3, and I even had a wheel and pedlas I would use for it. Unfortunately GTA3 is incredibly unlrealistic. The physics are cartoonish, the AI behavior is dumb, the pedestrians are dumb, the cops are dumb. The game incenvitcizes chaos.

The question is: how do we make things likr speed limits and stop signs and pedestrian crossings fun?

My instinct is to model off the real world to an extent. Could involve delivering things that are fragile and cannot handle a bunch of G’s. Could be fines or a karma system of some kind for rolling stops. Could be that a realistic damage modeling system makes dents and scratches look terrible and lead to rust, and repairs are just as expensive as they are in real life. Maybe a LOT of the car is consumable or wearable. Not just gas and tires, but all the fluids too, and brake pads. Maybe taking a turn too hard damages the suspension. Crashing into something means you not only need to repair your car, but also whatever you hit.

The more I list this out, the more this seems like a punishing and tedious slog. It seems really hard to design a game that incentivizes something like this, at least with most of the current mechanics in games today. Maybe a multiplayer social component would help? Like a virtual parking lot and drag strip for people to meet up on the weekends and check each other’s virtual rides out? I would not be interested in that, but my uncle might be.

Maybe it could be heavily story-based. I would go noir-style, where as you drive around either you see things or your driver character provides some narration. Something like “that abandoned building over there used to be an ice cream parlor. That’s where I had my first kiss. I wonder what ever happened to Suzie? I drove a '69 Cobra that night. Lovely car” and then the Cobra is available in the shop. Maybe there is a mystery about stuff going on in the world. Maybe it is a post-apocalyptic world and you’re scavenging, mostly alone and unchallenged, in the ruins of a city, slowly learning what led to this. I think about how Detroit’s population went from ~1.8 million to 0.6 million in ~50 years and what it would have been like to stay there and experience that.

Maybe a parody of Crazy Taxi called Sane Uber where the main priority is ride comfort?

So what has changed? Do you think Biden woukd have stopped “his proxy war” in Ukraine in order to go and fuck things up on Iran?

China has been doing fantastically well, continuing to influence Africa and Europe despite what you think the US’s intentions in Syria may have been, and China also seems to be benefitting pretty well from what is going on in Iran too. Russia does not have the economy to compete with the US or China. China has been benefiting from the NATO division too, the undermining of the US dollar, and the high oil prices have driven the world to invest even more strongly in solar panels and electrical infrastructure, which China is by far the leading supplier of.

The simple fact that makes Iran different from Ukraine or Syria is that ear with Iran is bad for the US and its allies. Biden understood that.

The US has books on going to war with literally every country, because its an imperial power with employees whose literal job it is to make sure they are prepared in every scenario. They purposefully use code names and try to obscure the plans that are against countries they are currently allied with. That absolutely does not mean it is realistic to predict that anyone who would have been elected would go to war with every single country. That document was written in 2016: why didn’t Trump go to war in his first term? Why didn’t Biden do anything in his term? Suggesting Biden would have changed without material changes to the global economy, the middle east, or within Iran, is a silly oversimplification just trying to hate on Biden for no reason. Which is even more silly considering there are very real reasons to hate on Biden. I find it odd you haven’t even mentioned Yemen, which is what I was referring to when I called him a war criminal.

Biden had 4 years to make that happen if he wanted, yet at every chance he turned towards economic and political pressure instead of military pressure with Iran. I really do not understand why you think that would have somehow changed in a hypothetical second term.

Trump tried to start a war with Iran in his first term, failed and then forced it in his second term and is failing miserably in every way possible.

It is possible that Biden may have personally wanted to go to war with Iran. I don’t know him personally. But every move he made aa President and as VP signaled he did not want to. Regardless of his personal motivations, he probably understood what Trump did not: the US has never had the ability to force the Straight of Hormuz open, Iran has the ability to close it, and the closure would have disastrous economic consequences for the US and its allies.

Its funny you mention Ukraine out of nowhere because the one country which HAS benefitted from all this is Russia. Sure, they supported Iran, but suddenly there are tensions within NATO and the world is more desperate for natural gas.

US-Iranian Relations under Biden were complicated and nuanced.

Biden was VPnundee the Obama administration who famously came close to finalizing the “nuclear deal” with Iran, under which they would cooperate with UN inspectors and be allowed to enrich unraniun for energy, sanctions woukd have been eased, relations would have been normalized. That is NOT to say everything would have been sunshine and rainbows in the Middle East. Khomeini was still an oppressive dictator, US inperalism would still continue, oil would be even cheaper and continuing to destroy the planet, and the region would still have plenty of tensions from religious, ethnic, and political divides. But it would have been one of the biggest steps towards peace and stability since since the Ottoman empire collapsed.

Trump tore it up in his first term and illegally assassinated an Iranian general in early 2020. Which was quickly forgotten about in the news cycle because of Australia wildfires and then Covid.

Biden tries to restore that deal, but it waa made much more difficult because Iran (and most of the world) learned they could not trust the US long-term.

Biden was a war criminal who continued a lot of war crimes in the middle east from his predecessors, but to suggest he would have provoked or forced an issue with Iran similar to what Trump is doing is just asinine “both sides”-ing. Biden also LISTENED to his military experts who would have told him what a dumb idea this was.

When I worked at Target many years ago, one of my roles was the Cash Office.

I can confirm it was incrdibly tedious and expensive work. The store would do $100k in sales on a Saturday, and Sunday morning i would spend 3 hours counting uo the $10k of that which was cash. Plus another grand or so in checks.

Then there was the change to deal with making sure we were well-stocked on all the various coins. It’s been a while but I think we sometimes ordered Ones, Fives, maybe even Ten dollar bills too. All of which of course cost a premium over face value tl have delivered to the store. Plus I am sure it cost a decent amount to have the Twenties and higher picked up a few times a week. Then there was the cost of equipment - the registers themselves, the safe, the cash counting machine, the software, the special envelopes, the cash cart we used to move cash between the registers and safe, the double-locked doors in the cash room. The opportunity cost of dedicating a whole room to that which could have been retail or office space. The insurance on it all.

Aa much as I hate the control and privacy issues, I also absolutely understand why businesses hate using cash.

I don’t see Steven Universe mentioned anywhere. That might be my all-time favorite, and slots right in with the likes of Adventure Time and She-Ra.

Sticking to the Adventure Time-related ones, Over the Garden Wall is great and very autumnal. My wife ans I try to watch that every October. Gravity Falls is also great, especially for the summer since it takes place over the course of one summer vacation. Bravest Warriors is okay- not a must-watch, but decent. Bee and Puppycat is pretty solid and chill.

For slightly older crowds (I see yoy have stuff like Gurren Lagan on here), Midnight Gospel is pretty good and also from Adventure Time’s showrunner.

For other anime, there is always Fullmetal Alchemist. Saiki K if you can get past the fast editing. Kenichi: The Mightiest Disciple is one that’s probably just “okay” but I like a lot.

Centaur World was surprisingly good.