I’m sort of tired of articles describing some catastrophe that happened ten years ago and saying “it’s worrying.”

As I remember it: It’s an online game, so you need a monthly subscription to play. That is a set price in whatever real-world currency as normal. But you can buy as many months as you like in advance; and if you buy more than you need you can sell them in-game for whatever you can get on the open market which is controlled by players.

It was a long time ago, no idea if it still works that way. But it seemed to me like a good system, for a game in which in-game market trading between players is a big part of it.

P.S. Actually come to think of it I think they went free-to-play at some point. I wonder if my account still exists.

I hope it doesn’t affect EVE Online. As I remember it their system didn’t involve any deception or confusion, even though there was in-game currency you could spend € on if you wanted to.

Well I mean there was plenty of deception and confusion among and between the players, but none from the game itself.

Oh yes I did fail to include a full catalogue of all the base instincts it obviously appeals to — but it’s as if people are eating a giant pile of shit for breakfast, and you’re helpfully explaining that well, we all need to eat.

It says the opposite — they do have an engine that will be ready for 2026, unless they change the rules for 2026. They would want the 2026 changes to go ahead as planned for a couple years before then moving to V10.

… Red Bull that is; Ferrari might be the ones pushing the idea of dropping the 2026 change. If so maybe they just think they have an advantage with the current rules and don’t want to risk giving it up.

oh I would quit X, but I’d miss [ politicians / my friends / the latest gossip / the hottest memes / Stephen King ]

It might’ve seemed to make sense in 2016 but that bullshit doesn’t fly any more. It no longer takes any imagination or courage to see it for what it is. There are no more excuses.

I used to think that the worries about social media algorithms exerting some kind of profound mind control on the users were overstated, but holy fuck, what kind of perverted sci-fi brainwashing power does twitter have that people are still using it even in the year 2025?

I hear they’ve suddenly developed a tendency to spontaneously catch fire.

Un-modded Skyrim has health regen (even during combat) unless you turn on “survival mode” but overall it’s a much better game if you spend the first 30 hours installing mods. In particular the melee combat can be much improved with MCO and related things. Or just pick a wabbajack, I hear Tempus Maledictum is one that people like.

It’s not as if humans slavishly obeying the algorithms was a much better situation than robots doing it. They’ve just sped up the process and it can only hasten the demise of the new technofeudalist content mills.

Oh, literally unplayable. That’s even better. I was imagining a “lesbian? y/n” toggle in the settings that did absolutely nothing.

The Pirate Bay is perfectly fine for that sort of thing.

It’s too bad that “The Great Reset” they have in mind is just tearing down democratic institutions and handing all power to fascists, because a reset that was truly great might be worthy of consideration: All debts cancelled, all bank balances zeroed, all existing copyrights and contracts annulled, ownership of homes falls to those who live in them, ownership of factories and fields are granted to those who work in them, and after a period of great confusion we start again from there.

The world has moved on. We tried doing nothing and it just didn’t work. Everything in life involves trade-offs and the cost of not fucking around with the composition of the atmosphere is just too high.

Calm down activists, my private jet is carbon neutral. I pay five times the price of fuel to a carbon offset broker to be absolved of all responsibility if it isn’t.

“not that bad” — a very comfortable and well-decorated prison. But you can’t blame pixelfed for every poor choice its users might make in their lives.

That has its place too I guess, but personally I’d point in the opposite direction and say there’s also room for more general-interest news sources aimed at the kind of people who already know at least enough about Mauna Loa to be aware that it’s famous for producing the most widely used measurements of atmospheric CO2.

Lowercase-C conservatives deserve better.

As you say though, at least the small-c conservatives (if any remain) have something close to their ideal Prime Minister right now. It’s the rest of us who are less well represented.

If enacted, I’m guessing the main effect of this would be to make “meow” the new standard greeting among a large fraction of the student population in Texas high schools.

Welcome to 2014