People who don’t want to use the epic store. That was me. I just don’t want another launcher, another account. I’ll get around to it at some point I’m sure but I didn’t buy AW2 and probably would have if it wasn’t an exclusive.

Or just… Don’t make a launcher?

The holiday special is best star wars story told. To be sure, it borrows from a lot of the character building that had already taken place, but that adds to it, not detracts. Where as the main trilogy was a scifi retelling of a classical samurai tale, the Christmas special comes with its own new ideas as to what drives the starwars universe and the plight of the everyman under the empires boot heel, a perspective we actually didnt get to see much. I think it was bold artistic direction made possible by the original trilogy’s unexpected success, and we’re richer as a species for the temerity of the writers. The tones got a bit more alacrity than the trilogy which catches a lot of fans off gaurd but nothing to objectively dismiss it for.

You seem knowledgeable, is the FBS clonal? Like can it grow more undifferentiated or does it need to be continually harvested?

I mean you’re spot on, it’s really not the end of the world, and you’re correct on the parks and rec.

I think people get prickly because of what you mentioned about the substance of the article probably being way worse, everyone’s just primed these days lol. We’re kind of sorting some shit out over here…

Anyway thanks for the conversation, it’s always fun to see your own culture through someone else’s eyes.

I guess what it comes down to is there a plenty of things, big and small, that I don’t have an issue with as an American but I know matter to the other person. Usually it’s small stuff (how people comport themselves in relation to work, the line between direct and rude, etc) , but when it comes to things where people died, I think it’s best to defer to the people involved.

Maybe that’s a trap of my upbringing as well but I don’t see that as American lens, I see that as recognizing there are a lot of lenses.

And again, the original joke is decent, its a role reversal and punches up not down, but I wouldn’t want an American paper making jokes about Finnish biathalon Olympians spanking the Russians.

Any joke with cultural baggage carries the risk you miss context. Again, I don’t think that’s just true for Americans.

You do you, it’s just in poor taste. It’s not the end of the world or anything, it’s just funny to me that it’s the same thing “boorish Americans” get flack for.

What’s ironic is you’re displaying exactly what you’re critiquing. This joke is a bit funny, but it’s on par with something like “Prince Charles asks NRA to fix his car”. There’s just baggage. And lord knows Italy has plenty of its own.

On snap Patrick Stewart was in startrek???

I have a story to share that this crowd will appreciate.

I got into TNG with my Dad. We’d watch it on broadcast when I was young whatever day of the week it was that is on.

Thing is, the afterschool daycare I was at, the last 45mins or whatever, as kids were trickling out, they’d sit us down to watch something while they closed up shop, vacuuming, wiping the kid grime off stuff etc. Frequently what they put on was reading rainbow.

So being young, I’d ask my Dad about Geordi’s visor and his eyes. He would patiently explain that Geordi was blind but could see with the visor. Somewhere in there was the episode where his visor breaks and he and the Romulan bond. So far so good, I’m with you.

But what I could NOT square, and didn’t have the means to articulate, was that just earlier that day Geordi was reading me godamn books. WITHOUT HIS VISOR.

… and then there we got to the godamn crossover episode of reading rainbow.

1. Yes: you absolutely want the outdoor rated PVC if you’re getting sun exposure. You can cheat, it’s not like the white stuff will be immediately destroyed, but if you want something that will last a bunch of seasons, the “grey” stuff is the way to go. Double check that it’s UV rated though, and doesn’t just happen to be grey.

2. To get around all of that, you can bury it. Because you’re just doing it for the garden, you don’t need to dig down to the frost line. Just make sure you clear the line at the end of the season. Another advantage is that you’ll minimize the amount of water that’s been baking in the sun idle in the pipes. If it’s a heatwave and they’re in direct sun, that water can get downright hot to the touch. I’ve never lost a plant because of it but frankly I’m kind of surprised by that. If you do bury, you might consider running some electrical conduit at the same time, even if you don’t put wires in it (DO however include a pull cable for later use). What you do at either end of that is a whole other project, but you can always just cap it and get it to it when you get to it. Solar + Battery usual works great for garden automation stuff, but being able to run an ethernet cable can simplify a lot.

3. Plastic will hold up fine, but as others have mentioned you might want one of these.. The union allows to remove it. You could do a more simple threaded system IF you are able to completely and freely rotate everything “down stream” of the valve. I’m just going to say the stupid part out loud because I learned pipe stuff the hard way: A ball valve threaded on both sides cannot be loosened from one side without tightening the other (again, unless that other side can freely rotate). Edit: alternatively unions are sold separately, and sometimes you can eek out some flow advantages that way but it’s in no way worth thinking about at garden water flow rates.

4. Finally, a last alternative I’ve seen done well for gardens that sort of “wrong done right” is putting posts up and stringing a hose over head. It kind of seemed like as much work/expense as burying it, but I guess they had the posts, it came out really sharp in the end. You need a pretty high quality hose though. Baking in the sun and sagging under the water weight can end badly.

That and post-scarcity doesn’t mean “zero scarcity”. Like if someone wanted to create a picard funkpop the size of a planet, I don’t think they’d be allowed the resource budget.

It’s like how it doesn’t matter where you live, if you want to buy on the silk road, you need bitcoin. Presumably even the federation can’t just make latinum whenever they please, or we wouldn’t see them haggle with it. Although, it would be fun to see that they could and just take the responsibility of not crashing non-federation cultures entire economies very seriously, either out of respect or treaty.

Damnit, I want a LD episode where the crew is frustrated and desperately wants to just “buy” their problem away but can’t because an economist at command says it’ll mean they have to rescue all these non-federation colonies that are currently self sufficient. Come to think of it it’s right there with the “you break it you own it” concept of the prime directive.

I think that’s exactly the point though. “We didn’t mark it up to mark it down, the price is just the price”. As a chronic patient gamer part of me hates that (I love finding older classics for like $10) but I don’t mind shelling out for a good game. The biggest expense is my time, and if a bunch of years later the price hasn’t moved it’s probably worth my time.

oh yeah, I didn’t want to be dismissive of the mtx stuff. It’s absolutely predatory and awful, but I don’t think it fully stands in the way of developing good games.

Which is related to what you’re saying about indies going under even after success. Game development takes time, and you need money to underwrite that time. I just think there’s going to be a split; right now AAA studios are shitifying their games, turning them more into CandyCrush skinner boxes. But the demand for good games hasn’t gone away, there’s just less financial upside than making CandyCrush. My point is, even though it’s less money, there’s still a good amount of money to be had there. Eventually the gaps going to be filled. Microsoft cant fill it because on the balance sheet, things like COD and anything from King are where they should be focused. And it sucks right now because they sucked up a stupid amount of talent and thanos snapped them, but thats not a sustainable practice.

But yes, it’s going to be painful. It’ll suck seeing really nifty indie stuff have to struggle so hard. Like I said I’m also going to miss the polish that comes with AA stuff. I’m going to miss the hell out of Arkane. Their games weren’t perfect, but they had so much soul. They didn’t deserve to have Redfall be their epitaph.

Oh I’m well aware lol. The game is a godamn miracle. But thats the thing, Bethesda has been on this trajectory for a good lonnnnnng while. Like the whole “obsidian good bethesda bad” thing isn’t quite right, but what is true is Bethesda has been incredibly strategic about shittifying their games: there’s always just enough there to keep you going “ok… one more”.

Starfield is the first one I just didn’t even bother with.

FO4 is why I waited and ultimately didn’t buy starfield. I LOVED elderscrolls, and FO:NV is like my alltime favorite. I didn’t hate FO4, there’s some fun to be had, but you can see pretty clearly from it where FO:76 came from. From what I’ve seen and read, I’m not missing anything with starfield.

NMS is tough. They did an amazing job trying to salvage it, but it will always be a game that was never meant to be that big. It’s not bad but at somepoint in the loop you just go “wtf am I doing?”. I give that team all the credit in the world, but that game never belonged where it is.

Eh, skill up had a great take on this. The thing is it’s wayyyyy easier to be a small indie developer than it ever was before. Making a game (or any art) still isn’t easy, it never was and never will be, but it’s viable without a giant publisher in a way it just hasn’t been before.

Its the AA titles that are on the most precarious footing, but I bet even those do ok. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy some AAA stuff time to time, I’ve got a stupid amount of hours in overwatch, but I’ve never once paid for a skin because… why would you?

The thing that’s going to suck is losing the studios like Arkane. Their games weren’t perfect but they were freaking cool, and they basically always got the raw end of the deal. Even Prey(2016), their masterpiece, is the product of corporate bullshitiery they had nothing to do with. So we’re probably going to miss studios like that for a while (as they get re-tasked to fortnite/cod support teams) but “indie” stuff has already been stepping up to fill that void, and is less indie all the time.

Look at Dave the Diver. That’s not exactly an indie studio. They had resources. There’s going to be a gap for a bit, but there’s still a demand for good games and art. Those AA breakthroughs are what people want. Again, I continue to spend dumb amounts of time on overwatch, but it’s not where I spend my money. Microsoft hovelled themselves by buying all these studios and not taking the leap with supporting them. Distribution just doesn’t have the value it once did. So if microsoft wants to become CandyCrush, feeding an addiction loop to grab the whales, sure, whatever, but there’s plenty of bread out there for studios doing other stuff.

I did really like this, but it is a bit generic.

The audio book is fantastically done and it’s written well enough. Characters are fleshed out and interesting, the universe makes sense.

Again: I really enjoyed it I just don’t think it really put anything new on the table.

Bare with me here because I am not an expert. I think what they’re getting is the same as how gravity doesn’t exist. Vsauce did a great video on that, but the general notion is that because space time is curved, objects traveling in streight lines will appear to be drawn closer to one another. “Gravity” isn’t fundamental, warping spacetime is. Nothing changed but our understanding of it, which does matter for some more complicated areas.

I think this is similar. Just like gravity “doesn’t exisit”, it’s just an emergent phenomenon: they’re saying so is time. They’re saying time isn’t fundemental, except that it’s an expected phenomenon that would arise from other factors, those factors being proposed to be some entanglement crap I have zero ability to talk about.

And I’m putting some words in their mouth with “time isn’t fundemental”. What they’re really doing is proposing a new definition that better fits observed phenomenon/models.

And still, none of this explains why we still have daylights savings time.

I’m a chronic “patient gamer” belive me I get it. The underworld awaits you my friend ;)