I’ve played both Balatro and Hades, both are rogue likes, Balatro is just in the subgenre of deck builder. Balatro’s gameplay loop is closer to Hades than to poker, you’re wrong or uninformed to say otherwise. No one is playing Balatro and getting addicted to gambling and going off to play poker, but I can totally see it being a gateway to the rogue-like genre.

I’m certainly not arguing against content moderation for the littles. I just disagree with the reasons they cite, you know, the whole video games cause violence, and the bigger brother that is whatever BS puritanical religious zealots come up with to force their opinions on the pubic. Define a list of things we don’t want kids to see / know about at various ages, and why, then go on from there. There’s way too much bullshit in the laws that are just prior generations trying to force the next generations to not change, which is their prerogative, I just wish we could be honest about it.

If Balatro is gambling then so is every game that has a chance based mechanic. Genshin Impact is PEGI 12 and you can spend money on loot boxes, which is absolutely gambling. Balatro is identical to Hades, except you fight with cards.

The law is poorly written, or is being applied incorrectly here. Balatro is in no way simulating a casino, which I’d be more inclined to say games that do that should have a more mature rating. Bit of a slippery slope though, nothing stops a casino from adding a new game that mimics an existing genre of video game mechanics, and then regulators saying the entire genre is gambling. It’s all pearl clutching, not backed by any science, etc. made by the same people that want to ban Mortal Kombat and think Counter Strike causes school shootings.

They could release just swap a dozen words, it wouldn’t get this rating. None of those words are required for it to be a good game. The essence of gambling that society wants to protect children from is not part of Balatro any more than it is Solitaire.

Yeah, and King George III had all sorts of shit written down that people in governing roles agreed to. People under tyranny were pretty upset and tried diplomacy back then as well. Violence is what eventually solved it, and the people that went through that wanted to make sure violence was always an option, hence the 2nd amendment. Anyone, Republican or Democrat, that says otherwise is just wrong.

Same folks will be like, x issued more orders than any other president, but also excitedly talking about record revenue, turnout, etc. As if the stuff they agree with grows in a vacuum away from the stuff they disagree with.

It wouldn’t surprise me if it’s still competitive for a lot of markets, and if it’s not it’s because cable has been lowering prices to become competitive. Everyone I know 15 years ago was paying $300 once you added up TV, Internet, and cell phone bills. Accounting for inflation, that’s $450 today. I heard my grandma was being ripped for $350 a couple of years ago, and she just wanted a single channel. Hard to find anyone under an age that even has TV service, and those that do just want it for sports. At the original price of YT TV it was cheap enough to say why not, at the current price, even if it’s cheaper than cable, it’s now twice as much as I’d ever want to pay for it.

Fuck LG, not like they made good BR players. I’ve sworn to avoid buying their shit since they discontinued support for a BR player within a year of release, which back then meant you wouldn’t be able to watch any BR movie released after a certain date due to new DRM or whatever. They just up and decided to not release new firmware for units still under warranty.

That’s a nice analogy. If the world was sane and just, those in power would quickly get their shit in order now that they’ve been reminded what the 2nd amendment was actually meant for. Doesn’t matter if it’s king, president, or CEO, people in power over Americans are meant to respect the threat of violence.

Hate the right and the NRA skewing it for stupid individual self defense reasons just as much as the Democrats trying to claim it has something to do with militias.

Are you comparing raw dollars or percentage of property tax? Accounting for inflation and the increase of your property value? What about the whole situation where Texas collects the taxes but only disburses up to some amount to schools. Probably easier to just look at the ISD financials. Just need to remove all expenses for non education activities, like sports and administration. I wonder if the ISD funding also gets used to pay for ISD specific police. Just asking questions, without actually doing the work, betting teachers have lost way more than 30% in 5 years. Texas government is actively trying to prove that public education doesn’t work so they can justify privatization, and bring back legal segregation plus religious schooling funded by taxes.

Don’t discount the amount of common people that are totally onboard with killing everyone in another tribe. There have been plenty of times when leaders are the only reason diplomacy happens in the face of a bloodthirsty population, though certainly more common that war happens because leaders channel the energy of that bloodthirst as it is easier and the benefits (to themselves first, their tribe second) are thought to outweigh the risks. Look through history and you’ll see enough instances of leaders trying to keep the peace only to be killed by their bloodthirsty population and replaced by someone who will act.

I wish we could all just get along, but so far the only effective deterrent in all of history has been the threat of destruction, either by a sufficiently powerful peace mongering leader, or MAD that nuclear weapons established. I suspect the next change in this dynamic, if MAD holds true, is some real AI that takes the reigns. It would be hard to rule break if we had an omniscient leader that could kill you within seconds.

It would be quite disheartening if I was the first person to have had the idea, or articulate it in this way, though not totally unexpected. Will search scholarly articles to see what I can find. So far these types of views are only coming from ND lead research, which thankfully appear to be accelerating recently.

There’s some nature vs nurture question here. Let’s take twins with an identical ND brain. Due to random chance, from an early age one twin is interested in things society finds highly valuable, and the other is interested in things society doesn’t value at all. What are the outcomes from childhood on?

I am a rhythm game enjoyer, I’ve genuinely played Cytus. At this point I’d consider the best mobile rhythm game, but I don’t play it often as I’m not stuck playing only on a phone that often. Like, only play it on airplanes sometimes. I did fiend it for a bit when I first discovered it (10 years ago already?). Much easier to master than any other rhythm game I’ve played, might be part of why I don’t play it more.

For some kids here it’s the only good meal they eat. No one is mandating people’s kids eat the school food.

Obviously absolute speculation on my part, but if they were truly doing what I suggested intentionally, part of the plan would need to be plausible deniability to avoid anti-monopoly issues, and also public sentiment nightmare. Killing your favorite shop out of incompetence doesn’t win good will, but you will still go there. Doing it out of malicious intent could have people in other states joining a boycott.

I’m in management, participated in the acquisition process of the company I’m at being acquired. At least at the 150mm/year revenue level there’s no one doing the shit I’m suggesting, no one is so competent. Cash on hand is bad , acquisition is an obvious way to deal with that. You’re spot on about skills though, 95% of management at every level is totally incompetent at the work required to actually do management shit. All the competent people leave as soon as they can because the work just got way harder and the money doesn’t follow.

Perhaps they realized it would be cheaper to stop the growth of a superior product. Especially when that superior product would likely require more types of costs that would eat corporate level profit. More higher paid employees that can’t be mechanized.

Status quo is incredibly profitable, assuming nothing threatens it. That’s why big business does everything they can to increase the barrier of entry, and happily overpays to buy out successful competitors, with the leadership of the competitors having enforceable noncompetes for the model.

Anecdote, his people didn’t even watch the debate. If they did watch it, they watched some edited version the next day that only had his answers, basically an edited speech. Then they watched some talking go over all the worst bits of what Harris said and did. Then they read about how the moderators were unfair to Trump, and how Harris must have been given the questions ahead of time. I know multiple people that did exactly this, it’s all quite insufferable. Based on the way they talk, it wouldn’t surprise me if some people watched it live and just muted the TV when Harris was talking, because they can’t stand hearing her.

You can encode base 2 as base 10, I don’t think anyone is saying it exists in binary form.

Regardless of what the remote access test says about it being available, I had to manually port forward to fix this same issue.

Perfect thread to share my favorite podcast, The Film Reroll which ran a fantastic campaign for The Wizard of Oz.