u/da_chicken

I knew a few people that watched him on Politically Incorrect during the first few years. My older cousins, mostly. From my memory, early on Bill was a lot less of a smug douche and was more interested in letting the guests talk. It helped that Comedy Central didn't exactly have a lot of pull. I picked a random early episode from a YouTube playlist. It was this episode, which features... Julianna Margulies (the nurse from ER), Tom Arnold, Carrot Top, and Hugh Downs (anchor from 20/20, ABC's answer to 60 Minutes).

I don't know that people today appreciate just how wildly absurd it is to have a show that got Carrot Top and Hugh Downs to discuss politics. It would be like putting Kai Cenat on stage with Anderson Cooper and acting like that's a serious thing.

But Dennis Miller Live was a better show, and even Craig Kilborn's Daily Show was better (no offense to Craig, but his show was more comedy and less politics, and it didn't become serious satire until Stewart came in). It took Bill a long time to get real guests.

I don't ever recall a legendary in a vending machine in BL1, but now that I think of it, 95% of my BL1 play was in the 2010 GotY edition.

BL3 is the only one that has decent vending machines, IMX. Once you get to Meridian, you should be able to semi-regularly find Epics and even Legendary items for sale in a vending machine. Indeed, it was one of the things people complained about when they said the Legendary drop rate was too high (I don't agree; even if it wasn't perfect, I think BL3's drop rate was better than the series ever had been).

The fast travel point in Meridian Metroplex has a couple vending machines there, and I don't think I've had a playthrough yet that didn't pull at least one Legendary from those machines.

You idiots! These are not them! These are their stunt doubles!

Yeah, TWI is unique in that I've never read another book that captures wonder quite so well. The author is really good. But at the same time the author can really waste a lot of time, and in the first book I noticed more than one plot hole as I was listening to the audiobook.

If they ever find an editor worthy of the role, I can't imagine how far they might go. But I don't think that's what they want anymore.

I really liked VoT and Cyber Dreams. I even liked Falling on Folded Wings, which is definitely less polished. I think Cyber Dreams is his best work overall, though Victor of Tucson is very good as well.

I will agree with the OP that the series changes around book 7, but I don't think the main issue is the quality. I think it's that the author has colored in enough of a picture of who Victor is that he's really kind of finished his development. There's not a lot left to add, really.

However, I DNF Vainglory. I didn't like the MC, didn't like the support character, didn't like the mostly hidden magic system, didn't like the extremely slow burn pacing. It felt like everything was aggressively unlikable. I haven't gotten in to Neon Dreams yet, but it's on my phone.

You have to ask, and she will tell you. There isn't any other way to know. Those paper fortune tellers from middle school don't work.

If you never ask. you'll always wonder and you'll never know.

and you're right about the punishing mechanics thing, i think they might be frustrated by a few rules that don't quite work in their favor so maybe that's the optimization spiral.

Yeah, I've usually seen these kinds of issues in TTRPGs, especially this sort of thing. If a player unknowingly picks a character that's just a bad fit for them as a player, just swap the character out or something like that. It's not worth the player getting anxious and the table getting frustrated if you can just fix it by changing it a bit. The integrity of the game or the story you're telling is not more important than the fun that the players have. Because the fun is the real point.

I haven't seen the film, but I did read the book and so I talked with some friends that went. I think they thought Taika was kind of a poor fit, and that was my fear (and why I wanted to wait). Even if the Taika tone could be dismissed as Klara's perspective... IDK. It just seemed too weird. I don't know if TW's aesthetic has a good place right now.

Anyhow, the ending is close enough to Kazuo Ishiguro's ending from what they described. It's honestly similar to how several of his stories end. Not always definitive, but clear that there will be no more story to tell.

However, I think what Kazuo Ishiguro wants with his endings is for the reader (or viewer) to contemplate the story and how it has made them feel, rather than to just think about the events that were told to them. He wants you to examine that distressed feeling you're getting. That melancholy feeling and that examination is the work of art.

So, I think the answer to your question is yes and yes, but that the answer doesn't really matter. The point is the feelings you get that make you want to ask.

Eh, on the one hand sure.

On the other hand, this sub has no spoiler rules. What exactly did you expect when the thread title is extremely clear that it's about the ending of the movie?

I mean, it's definitely a playstyle difference. There are games where the whole point is that optimizing. Some would probably argue it's the whole point of Eurogames and why they tend to lack interaction.

Your first stop should still be talking to the person. Do they recognize that they're playing so differently? Are they aware that how they're playing is getting perceived as disruptive to the flow of the game? What do they think should be done about it? Is there some aspect of the game that the player is finding really punishing or really frustrating that's causing it?

On the flip side, are there games that you have which you can sometimes play where that optimization is more important?

Not possible. I have seen people CharOp Amber Diceless. In a game run by Erick Wujcik.

I usually crank the speed on non-fiction already.

Some of them do just repeat the same point over and over, only with slightly different stories or anecdotes. I either DNF, or skip to a chapter that seems to be making another point, or skip to the end.

Biographies can be particularly annoying when you care about a 5 or 10 year portion of the person's life and instead you have to wade through 30 years of backstory to get there.

My favorite part of the original release of Hackmaster was the spell components. Like an ESP spell that has you essentially construct something in the shape of a TV. Or a light spell that requires rolling a tube of paper and putting a glass lens on one end.

I remember it being fun at first, then there was just... so many supplements. Like a dozen core books or splatbooks, like two dozen modules, and then a handful of accessories. They went ALL OUT.

Still, for awhile there it was a way to get an OSR-style game.

I'm also not in the MAHA crowd. I can't imagine anyone less credible to speak about healthcare or formulate public health policy than RFKjr.

But, I think the /r/Michigan and /r/Michigan_Politics subs might be less useful to you. Back in 2020 during lockdown, a lot of conservatives on this sub got mad about lockdown -- ok, they got mad about getting downvoted to hell for complaining about masks -- and made /r/RealMichigan, which is now a dead sub. Like /r/ConservativeMichigan and /r/PureMichigan, the conservative Michigan subs all kinda died. I think a significant number of conservatives just... left reddit.

Eh, the last time I went to RR it was impossible to find anything interesting among the sea of AI slop and undisclosed AI slop. I think the site's time as a real place for new fiction or as a hub for new fiction are fading fast. It used to be hard to find something genuinely good there. Now it's essentially impossible. Between the new policies, the rise of AI, and the fact that everything that's actually good just vanishes into a stub and a patreon/amazon link... I'm just done with it.

The one on the right looks like DDR3 (or DDR2), not DDR4. I bet if you count the pins there will be 120 on each side.

Yeah, I've never done anything that large, but even for volunteers in a college town there was almost always a club or community group that would help out. Especially if you fed them!

I was straight for a long time and had a few men express interest when I was. On the receiving end it's not really any different than women expressing their interest when you're monogamous and taken. Or even when people you aren't attracted to do it.

"Hey, that's flattering but I can't give you what you want."

It's not really any different than that. Just not a match.

I say do it. You'll always wonder if you don't.

So, this is about the shipping label printer? About barcode labels? About the packing slip or invoice? About the shipping document pouches? Do you need MICR toner for printing checks?

I don't understand why this question is holding you up. You set the printing defaults based on what the printer is going to be used for most often.

For your ERP software, you check their manual if they require something stupid. If it's a label printer, you set it for that. If it's sales materials, you set it for looking the best. If it's packing slips and POs and invoices, you set it to default to using as little toner as you can and duplex if you can to save money until you're told otherwise.

What is your confusion?

Yep. Printing defaults is where you set the bulk copier to black & white on, duplex on, economode on, and dpi to 150. Then when your users are wasting money on dead trees it's as cheap as possible, and if they need the high quality settings they have to do that themselves manually.

You assume that the character limit could be changed without breaking a ton of legacy stuff.

I do not.

I assume that the only way people learn to maintain their software is by being forced to do so at gunpoint.

So Microsoft needs to draw a gun and start counting.

Which is to say, exactly how they already deprecate everything else.

I stopped getting hyped for new releases across all media around 20 years ago. You get tired of disappointment and are just happy when something is very good or better.

But there's just so many questions.

SqEnix has had a poor track record with big releases recently. Chunsoft has done better, but seeing a development restart is never good. It reminds us of the failures in Final Fantasy. It feels like DQ12 saw what happened to FF16 and the Like A Dragon series and decided their whole direction was wrong. And it probably was! But it's exhausting to wait again.

And it's sad that Toriyama and Sugiyama are gone now (setting aside the latter's politics). And that this is almost certainly Horii's last Dragon Quest. Is he healthy enough to finish it right?

I'm still of two minds about the "darker" timeline. I already thought that DQ11 had a really dark storyline! I don't know how you go darker than that and stay with Dragon Quest. But now we're always going to be haunted by this game that never was, and some people are going to stick to that idea of a game that hype made in their head. So it's never going to be received as well.

Mostly, I just want to play a new main DQ.

And yes.. I completely understand that due to the "nature" of the big bad, the exposition dump technically makes sense within the context of the story.

Yeah, but that kinda becomes a Thermian argument. Fictional worlds aren't real. They are whatever the author wants them to be. If that results in a bad story, it's not a problem with how books work. The author chose a poor antagonist for a novel, and they had the opportunity to choose from anything imaginable. If they ended up with a bad story, they could just rewrite it. Criticizing an author for the quality of the result is always going to be valid.

However, I gave up this series long before you did so I can't really comment on whether or not you should continue.

Prioritizing is frequently difficult because you're often very close to the problem. This is when and where a good manager is very helpful. Just tell me what to focus on. They should also be giving you some guidance on how much time you should devote to incidents (fixing something broken) and service requests (delivery of something needed).

Most especially, you need to be logging your time and then going home at 8 hours a day. There will always be more work.