Looks interesting, but I gotta be honest: when I click on the Steam page and the first thing I see is a cash shop to buy "Epoch Points" for this early access game? That's an instant turn-off for me. I'm sure it's not as predatory as what Blizzard did with D4's monetization, but I don't want it in my games, period.

Re-Logic (Terraria's developers) have already gone on record saying, "even if Unity were to recant their policy and statements, the destruction of trust is not so easily repaired.” That's the stance I think every developer should be taking. Unless you have a Unity game that can be released by the end of the year, all devs need to seriously consider switching engines.

I hadn't heard about those changes, but that's quite a relief. I hated traveling to individual ripperdoc clinics to snag all the best upgrades. Especially because the best cyberware for your frontal cortex can only be bought from a VDB ripper in Pacifica, and I didn't want to give those assholes any of my eddies.

My wife is a music nerd, so I asked her this question. Her answer: Summer Nights from "Grease". The entire song is perfect for what it is, except for the very last word. John Travolta switches to his falsetto range to sing the word "nights" in a style that reminds me of the Bee Gees, and it just doesn't fit with all the vocals that came before it. It's literally a sour note to end what's otherwise a perfectly good song.

I doubt Ashton and Mila apologized because they actually regret writing those letters; this is just damage control because they got caught defending a rapist. Also, Scientology isn't a religion, it's a criminal organization, and it ought to be treated as such.

I was disappointed to hear that Kurtwood Smith wrote a letter in support of Masterson too. I really liked him in RoboCop... but I guess there's a reason why he was so good at acting like a total bastard.

I only have a small amount of experience with generating images using AI models, but I have found this to be true. It's like making a photocopy of a photocopy. The results can be unintentionally hilarious though.

Her seat is not in danger, but there's infighting over who will replace her. If Feinstein resigns, California's governor gets to appoint her replacement, and Gavin Newsom is likely to appoint a black woman if given the opportunity. Rumor has it that Nancy Pelosi wants Adam Schiff to replace Feinstein though, so she is pushing for the 90 year old Senator to finish her term.

Feinstein's caretaker also happens to be Pelosi's daughter. That's not a conflict of interest at all.

You run the risk of being ostracized by a conservative social group if you share any opinion that contradicts the teachings of the church school. I'm straight, but the hicks I went to high school with shouted every homophobic slur they knew at me anyway, because my opinions sounded "gay" to them.

That being said, you could tell her that the church has held opinions in the past, which they decided to change when we learned more about the world. The church persecuted Galileo for suggesting that the Earth revolves around the Sun. They called Leonardo da Vinci a necromancer for studying human anatomy. And 98 years ago, Christians wanted to hang John Scopes for teaching evolution in Tennessee.

Basically, if you can't tell her directly, you can at least suggest that the church is not infallible when it comes to certain topics. Again though, people will consider you subversive even if all you're doing is relaying pure, historical facts. There's no safe way to contradict a zealot.

The United States has very similar problems. The oppressed are encouraged to work within the system if they want things to change. They go to the system, and find it broken. So they protest, and the moment the protests turn violent-- or appear to turn violent-- the oppressed are labeled as being impatient or perhaps even deserving of being marginalized. Cries for freedom are willfully misinterpreted as the howling of barbarians, and used as populist propaganda.

Like you, I don't know what it's like to be treated like a second-class citizen in my own country, but I do know that racism doesn't go away simply because the government declares that it won't be tolerated. It's hard to come up with any specific solution to this particular problem though, when it's a conflict that humans have struggled with for their entire existence. Back in 2020, people were just trying to get the message out that black lives matter. Even when taken as a plea for solidarity with no specific policy demands, somehow that statement proved controversial.

Strangely enough, the best 4th of July I've ever had was when I was in Lyon.

France has been a big fan of revolution since the late 18th century. They're on their Fifth Republic and I'm sure some French people feel they're overdue for a Sixth, just for the sake of keeping the tradition alive.

I've been seeing a lot of low-effort content lately, and I suspect it's coming from users who want their Reddit alternative, and they want it now. So, they see that Beehaw has a large community, and decide it's a perfect place to start content-barfing.

I think the admins have been clear that they're not trying to create a replacement for Reddit here, though. Everything under the sun does not have to be re-posted, just content that you actually want to discuss with this community specifically. When I see five posts created by one user in under a minute, I can't help but think that the intent there is not to spark discussion. And, of course, the volume is problematic for the mods when they don't have the tools they need to manage it.

Nikki Haley's parents were Sikh immigrants, originally from Punjab. And she's calling for an increase in deportations. I don't get it, either.

#1 for me. That gold cartridge really stood out amidst my collection of other NES games, for more reasons than one. Naturally, I needed a guide to get through my first playthrough, but I kept coming back to it and eventually had the whole game damn near memorized.

I agree, BioWare does not need to be devoting its resources to SW:TOR at this point. It's been out for a good, long while and the fact is, MMORPGs are not big money-makers these days. There was a huge wave of them in the wake of WoW's success but none of them were able to achieve the kind of market success, player base or staying power of WoW. That ship has sailed, and it's only appropriate to let the BioWare devs get back to doing what they do best.

I don't have high hopes for the next Dragon Age game, but would love to be pleasantly surprised. They've changed directions so many times during the development of that game, so I'm expecting the end result to be a mess. Mass Effect gives me slightly more hope as a possible return to form for BioWare though, if they learn from Andromeda's missteps and focus on what made the original trilogy (particularly the first two games) great.

Do you suffer from anxiety about climate change and its effects?

I moved to Maryland in 2010. In the 13 years I've been here, I have definitely noticed effects of climate change. Snow has become rare in the winter. There are more 100F days in the summer. And there are fewer insects, with the exception of carpenter bees, which you usually only saw on the Virginia side of the Potomac.

That's just in my backyard. Elsewhere, Lake Mead and the Great Salt Lake are literally drying up. The jet stream that has a major impact on our weather might just disappear some day in the near future. Also, the entire country of Australia caught on fire a while back.

What gives me anxiety is how damned fast these changes happened. It wasn't a shift that happened over the span of a generation, it's only been a dozen years. I can't help but wonder, how are things going to look in another 12-13 years at this rate?

Have you ever made significant individual lifestyle choices because of climate change?

Individual lifestyle changes aren't going to be enough. 100 companies are responsible for 71% of global carbon emissions. And a significant chunk of those emissions come from oil companies. We need to be more aggressive in banning new sales of petroleum-burning vehicles and invest in other forms of zero-emission, mass transit. I take the Metro whenever I go into DC, but it doesn't do much good when the Beltway is constantly packed with SUVs and trucks.

What do you think of proposed technologies like carbon capture? Do you think they’re useful, or a technocratic waste of time? Can they be viably used at large scale on any reasonable timeframe?

No idea if they're viable, but I do know we're running out of time, and any possible solution is worth exploring. Even if we do significantly cut global carbon emissions at this point, damage has already been done. I think that it will be necessary to develop technology to reverse that damage, one way or another.