Remmock

Sweet Jesus, I thought you were my wife for a minute. Those are literally my cats in every respect except for the fact that they aren’t.

I’m SHOCKED. Shocked I tell you!

My wife and I are part of a younger generation whose culture revolves around NOT having children until all those things you mentioned are attained. The stress of even having a kid, let alone multiple, is not something we’re going to address until we hit financial security.

If you can find it anywhere, I recommend Gex. It was a fun 3D adventure platformer with shooter elements about a Gecko surviving his way through TV channel worlds.

Star Wars: Racer

It was a return to nostalgia for me. My wife bought this for me for Christmas. I was worried that I would lug into a very dated game, however:

The gameplay is so exquisite and the track design so carefully thought out that it’s really an exhilarating game. The tracks never get boring because they sprinkle in just enough variation and style to keep them engaging. The tricks you can pull in a podracer do not break suspension of disbelief the way normal car games do when pulling amazing stunts. The flow is smooth and fluid even now.

Between the minimap, rearview, braking, air breaking to sustain airtime and cushion landings, self-determined boosting (rather than relying on external powerups or boost zones), and repair management you’re never not adjusting to something. The game keeps you busy while you’re flying along the track.

To boot, the obstacles and shortcuts are carefully distributed and used, playing into the themes of the tracks. Most are small influences, but useful or interesting. One track will force you to reconsider your playstyle for it, however. Despite that it’s not so jarring that you want to stop playing.

You also get a bevy of racers to choose from and the ability to buy and juggle upgrades and pit droids keeps your gameplay evolving. You can even be rewarded for being a skilled player by adjusting the finish placement payouts.

Unfortunately due to careful planning and purchasing, as well as a better sense of how to play as an adult, the game has some shortcomings. Instead of being neck and neck, I was regularly 7-12 seconds ahead of the second place racer, regularly unable to see them in my rearview. A complete lack of a story mode and a low difficulty bar meant I was done in three days even with limited play time and inconsistent access. While this could have been saved with an Online mode added, I still had fun completing Tournament mode and would gladly give this to anyone who wants high-velocity adrenaline with more complex mechanics than your average racing game.

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They’re referring to actual articles about how police across America are milking the clock at the cost of taxpayer dollars doing virtually nothing while clocked in and pocketing the extra money.

What is the cut in French?

I’m not surprised they didn’t get any traction.

Nobody would be if it was up on wood blocks.

It’s more than the cost of a human life versus the cost of a drone. That footage is now propaganda. Imagine you’re a Russian soldier who knows fairly little about technology. Now imagine that clip makes its way to you. Ukranians are willing to take out even a single soldier. How safe are you?

Also, that single soldier could have been a scout with some useful information. Secrets are the most expensive weapon in any war.

I have no idea anymore, but I do distinctly remember some bots having red names instead of green.

Glad to bring that all back for ya.

When StarCraft was still relatively new the Blizzard games had a Chat function that spanned all of their games. If they belonged to another game you would see that Chatter’s game as an icon to the right of their name. You could speak to someone playing Diablo at any time. The social setup drove high engagement between players who regularly used to seek playing at a time when the gameplay was typically hosted on a player’s computer rather than on a server.

Clans didn’t have a ready in-game functionality, but fortunately Blizzard had allowed Chatters not only the freedom to change their username quite easily, but to also create Chat Rooms with custom names. By holding the Chat room, you could maintain Administrator rights over the channel.

Early Guilds had to have their users change their names to include the tags in their names, which meant virtually anyone could edit their name to include the tag they wanted. The expanded tag would be used as the name for the Chat Room, which allowed both members and non-members to find it easily enough.

The advent of bots using a Battle.Net login to hold the Chat Rooms and provide admin rights regularly to specific users spiked a new age as Clans became more stable. The bot would be used to blacklist trolls, recognize officers in the Clans, and create rosters to stop people from masquerading.

It created a boom, and in these early days clans rose and fell like the sun. Smaller clans were quicker to join other larger clans and conglomerate into new structures that would require testing and vetting of player skills. Friendships between real players, who formed clans only to incorporate better players from absorbing other clans, were sorely tested as some friends found their skills did not allow them to play regularly any more.

I was in one of these early guilds at the time, a group called the Silver Arrows. I had recently proved that while I lacked strategy for unit construction (as we were playing StarCraft) and combat, I was methodically organized in base construction and could start generating Protoss Scouts while Zerg players were still searching for others to conduct Zergling raids. I was still new to the game at that time and was flounderIng my way through the Campaign. As part of the Clan I found myself playing more often and seeking out games if only to spend time with my clanmates.

I was a member of the -[SA]- clan for about a month when the Silent Assassins {SA} entered into talks with our clan. Different clans with the same initials claimed different forms of their tags. We folded into their ranks and with the additional experience under my belt I found myself joining their first line. I played for a while, but as the boom/bust cycle continued it wasn’t long before I found myself playing relatively alone. Without a support group I gravitated towards Diablo and ultimately Diablo 2, only playing StarCraft socially with my real life friends.

No amount of “control” will work to fix something that is inherently flawed at a systemic level. The fall of Evergrande Group was merely one high-profile case of the real estate sector’s general collapse. With Beijing’s crackdown on developers’ high reliance on debt for growth, the entire real estate market, and all the companies within it, have been suffering. However, the Chinese government has been trying to resolve the crisis, having set up a financial stability fund through which it raised $9.6 billion in the first round of fundraising.

Assume you can prop up their real-estate sector long enough, which at this juncture is akin to a federal department, and you still have to look at the reality of the real estate itself. The only value in Chinese real estate comes from the volume and location of the plot. Chinese construction teams build with the cheapest materials, regularly to the detriment of the building’s ability to last. While some have touted China’s “disposable cities”, the fact is that they are collapsing on their own and ahead of schedule. The buildings are inherently worthless and trust in the companies that construct them are at an all time low in conjunction with the real estate planning and development groups, leading to a brewing economic crisis.

In addition, China is employing other stopgap measures that indicate a failing economy including massive currency buybacks utilizing agents to inflate the value of their yuan. However, they are not taking meaningful measures to secure the economy in the long term to my knowledge.

You get dopamine from this?

Thanks so much!

Are there places to post writing? I used to haunt r/writingprompts

The actual story portion was way too short. I prefer Tears of the Kingdom, because the story is longer and more involved.

It’s been the process since the Corporatist push of the late 1970’s.

Fashion designers are being replaced by AI.
Investment capitalists are starting to argue that C-Suite company officers are costing companies too much money.
Our Ouroboros economy hungers.