I’m assuming that “big pile of cash” is their emergency fund - Spencer implies as much when he says that it serves as an impediment to buying them out.

It’s not happening for Game Pass right now. If Microsoft hoovered up Nintendo and all the other companies, leaving Game Pass with little competition, they’d flip in an instant. Then you’d have not only Nintendo games for an overpriced subscription, you’d have Nintendo and everything else Microsoft bought for an overpriced subscription, where Microsoft can do whatever they want because only they have the rights to those games.

I’m not arguing Nintendo’s subscription services doesn’t suck ass, I’m arguing that Microsoft would do the same thing if they got their mits on Nintendo’s catalog, except potentially worse because they have more ‘exclusive content’ to lock-away in their garden and they can force their BS into Windows.

The ActiBlizz merger needs to be shot down and Microsoft Games needs to be forced to split off from Microsoft. This tactic of “Make all the money in one sector, then use that unlimited money to invade another sector, force small businesses out by operating at a loss, and then enshittifying the entire sector to a state worse than it was originally” has to stop - across all sectors.

If you can’t survive in your own sector on your own merits without money from Daddy Corpo, you deserve to die.

I also hate that Spencer talks like “sitting on a big pile of cash” instead of gambling it on the market is fucking stupid. Classic “NOW NOW NOW” American capitalism.

Why wouldn’t it happen for Game Pass? It’s happened for every new service. Start them with a great deal to undermine all competition because you can eat the cost and they can’t. When the competition dies, slowly start enshittifying it, until it’s as bad or worse than the original. Arguably Microsoft is already starting that process by killing off the $1 demo.

Microsoft isn’t going to pass up free money, and if anything this email conversation confirms that they’re drooling, waiting for the “fuck them over the barrel” stage.

Are they also going to alter their stance that Planned Parenthood and a children’s hospital aren’t charity?

Yeah, but there’s lots of people who might play the game that aren’t going to shell out for a PS5 for it.

Are the Ecosia results up to date? They used to be great, but awhile ago they changed something and it’s been hot garbage since. I still use them because trees, but I usually search with Ecosia, don’t see what I want, and then have to use another search engine.

Yeah, more or less.

So…what are you supposed to take at this point? Because you’re not supposed to take the “nighttime” branded decongestants long term, and phenylephrine was recommended as an alternative to that.

What the hell does “mostly” mean? “It’s just a little screwing you over”

It makes me kind of sad to see so many people happy that the accent is going away. It’s good to have diversity, and the thought of my “native” accent becoming extinct makes me sad. I don’t want bad people to have a claim to an entire accent and culture, especially since the death of the accent won’t do anything about the bad takes. There’s a lot that good about southern culture - taking things slow, being laid-back in a world that wants you to run around like a chicken with your head cut off, and forming tight communities with the people around you. I just wish there was a way to reclaim that without feeling afraid that people would assume I support the bad parts, too.

Why would you use an accent when it actively gets you associated with idiots / racists / conservatives?

There’s a lot of people who have been hurt by Southern culture, so naturally they reject that accent. A lot of decent people reject the accent because they don’t want people to assume they’re one of those Southerners. There’s also the aspect that you end up talking to people outside your region a lot more often than in the old days, so you learn to switch it off because people outside your region might not understand you well.

All y’all is broader, but I’m not sure how to characterize it. Like if you’re talking to someone who is part of a team, saying y’all could ambiguously refer to the whole team, but all y’all unambiguously refers to the whole team.

I wonder if a theocratic state built on a tyrannical religion almost isn’t worse, though…

I’ve not played Tactics Ogre yet, but that’s one of the next games on my list. I was going to start with Let Us Cling Together.

Godot?

How well does this work? Like is glare / not being able to see an issue? How much of the wall color shows through, or do you have to have a special screen?

Thanks for the recommendation!

I assumed Delita and Ovelia knew about the church suppressing the Durai papers, but you’re right that that probably wasn’t the case and even if it was, it didn’t tell her anything new.

Did Delita wipe out the nobility, though? Because he’s still king, and presumably has a court. He might’ve wiped out those nobles in specific, but it doesn’t seem like he achieved any systemic change - so what happened to Tietra will happen to someone else again down the line. I feel like that’s one of the points of his arc - he “doesn’t want to use people” but starts doing so because he has to, but in the end keeps doing so out of convenience, habit, and the damage he’s accumulated as a person. Him not ending the monarchy is the second biggest indicator of this.

Fair enough - and yeah, Wiegraf was definitely a stand-out character. When I first played it in 2000 I would’ve been scandalized and astonished by the idea that the church was secretly controlled by demons and were fundamentally based on a psychopath trying to rule the world or end it trying, but it felt weirdly grafted on to the class war arc and themes. I feel like the two plot lines could’ve honestly been separated into two different installments based on the same engine and both would’ve been highly praised.

I played some FF14, but got lost in the sauce of the seemingly never-ending story quest. The minute-to-minute gameplay wasn’t exciting for me, so I was trying to hold out for the super duper awesome raids I heard about, but those raids seemed to get further and further away every time I played.

I’m not sure whether to be excited about a remaster or scared. I played the PSX version instead of WotL already, and skipped the out-of-world tie in characters (Cloud / better Mustadio guy). I’d be interested to see what they do with it, but I might not end up playing it even though I’d love to see new Ivalice Alliance content.

IndustrialCraft still exists: https://www.curseforge.com/minecraft/mc-mods/ic2-classic

BuildCraft never moved forward past the block ID change in 1.12, but it’s still updated, IIRC.

Forestry hasn’t been updated in a long time, but with the addition of bees in vanilla there’s new bee mods to play with: https://www.curseforge.com/minecraft/mc-mods/productivebees

Logistic Pipes also didn’t make it past the block ID change in 1.12, but there are a variety of new storage mods like xNet, Integrated Dynamics, Applied Energistics 2, etc.

My personal opinion is that minecraft modding is a lot quieter than it used to be because Microsoft has been playing down the Java version (the moddable version) and playing up the version you have to pay for addons / mods (Bedrock). But there’s probably a lot of things contributing - aging demographic of the Java version, the fact that the mod API never happened and never will, disillusionment with M$, etc.