Adalast

The idea of free speech? Seriously? The idea is that the individual is free of tyranny to express ideas and viewpoints that run counter to authority. It has never had the concept that you are free to say what you want where you want. That is why free speech demonstrations have to happen on PUBLIC property. The side walk, a park, outside a publicly accessible government office. The instant you cross the threshold into a private space, the owner's free speech protections override yours. They have the right to moderate the speech that is expressed in THEIR space. Tyranny, by definition, can only be exerted by government or government-like entities. The owner of a private space does not have the authority or power to be tyrannical. That term may often be thrown around inappropriately, but when it comes to these conversations, we should always be cognizant of the actual realities and definitions of the terms.

Not to put together a strawman, but if it worked the way you are expressing there would be nothing stopping Burger King from hiring a bunch of people to go into McDonalds with signs and bullhorns to express that McD's is shit and BK is better. If McD's did not have the right to mediate the speech that occurred in their property, then they could not say or do anything. It is the same as if someone came in and started making racist remarks openly about patrons and employees. They have the right to remove this person. The same principal extends to online communities. If someone is exercising speech that the owner of the community space does not want spread on their platform, they have the right to remove that speech and the person exercising it.

My father pulled this gem out on me. I pointed out that fast food restaurants are open for breakfast and lunch, you know, while high schoolers are in, you know, school. And college students are in, you know, school. So by default adults who are not in school must fill 2/3 of the shifts. Surprising how fast he shut the fuck up when he realized that the job was, in fact, a real job that real adults with lives and children and rent were doing. He never said they were jobs for kids in my presence again.

People go out of habit. Honestly, that is usually why my family ends up getting any of them, but we have even broken those habits as prices keep going up. They have forgotten their place.

I agree. People keep suggesting Factorio, which leads me to believe that they have not actually read the post since his friend is into souls-likes and heavy combat games. Factorio is the antithesis of that! I don't personally play those games (Factorio is one of my most played games), so I can't make suggestions aside from Monster Hunter.

And don't forget that Trump is allowed to order hits on people once he takes office.

I wish I could filter out idle and clicker games. My biggies are Factorio and KSP for non-idle games. Several thousand hours in each.

That's just it, we have a VERY long runway on "the end" so we can careen for a very long time.

Consider me a psycho with a hot take, but I have always preferred games that mix the enemy difficulties around in a zone. Something like Ark where, sure, level 3 Dodos spawn on the starting beaches, but a level 70 Spino can spawn not far away and you have to be sure to skirt it lest you become a healthy snack. The steady progression of "zone difficulty" has always bugged me a bit because it is just so far off from realistic. Sure, close to a settlement there would be culling of particularly dangerous creatures, but some of them would still exist (if the settlement is being responsible). And yeah, as you get farther into the wilds those sorts of cullings would fall off rapidly, but to say that there would be areas where there are no easy monsters or no hard monsters, even in the wilds, is just not accurate.

Also, you get the same feeling of accomplishment, sometimes more, when you have died to hard monsters in starting areas a bunch of times then learned to skirt aggro properly, but then suddenly you come back after being out for a while and utterly decimate them. Just feels so good.

I commiserate with my medical professionals literally every time I have to see them. The worst part is that it isn't even the GED holder on the other end of the request. It is the actuarial table and risk analysis software they punch everything in to. Or an AI trained on the exact same tables and algorithms.

I have contemplated training an AI to look at medical records and score the standard of care given to patients. Would be nice to be able to weaponize the tech against them.

You know what has radicalized me the most? Getting a fucking math degree and understanding precicely how evil capitalism at large, but insurance companies in particular, is. To see the falsehoods they peddle because the consumers of their propaganda do not know what is being said. To see how they skirt and cheat every guard rail put in place to make sure that there is some level of ethics using statistics and a bit of other math bullshit. It is disgusting, egregious, and downright infuriating.

I see you are another of my pedant tribe. Thank you for the correction and context. You are a scholar and a gentleman.

That is where punitive damages come in. Most huge settlements are substantially punitive, which are damages awarded not on merit, but with the express intent of making the settlement hurt enough that the offender, and others in similar situations, think twice about taking similar actions.