I’d quibble that the average medieval peasant faced a lot less surveillance than the average citizen of any country today (Though perhaps that’s just a change in methods).

But you are right - and, in fact, I think it’s the case that countries/people in worse circumstances tend to have more kids (probably some weird evolutionary thing but I don’t want to speculate). As tough as times may seem in “developed” countries, most people don’t need to worry about where their next meal is coming from.

(This isn’t to say that circumstances are “fine” or that we shouldn’t improve things - simply pointing out some biological factors). It’s also worth noting that folks in worse economic circumstances tend to having a higher number of people in their “support network” (friends and family - ie, 3 generations living under one roof). Though perhaps this is not the case in the US since it’s culturally looked down upon to rely on family like that.

It’s an interesting phenomenon that can’t be boiled down to 1 or 2 simple factors like government type. Maybe this was too much text and I should’ve just said “I agree with you DeathByBigSad”

You are absolutely right. And even if they only end up charging some random lieutenant at the bottom of the chain, it will send a message to the rest of the troops that they will not be protected from the consequences of their actions.

Gameplay - quick time events weren’t super annoying (I wasn’t a fan of telltale batman quick time events), I personally liked the hacking minigame (though not everyone did), and the actual “dispatch” segments were tons of fun.

The story was excellent - I kept expecting a “twist” like we’ve seen in a lot of superhero media recently, and there weren’t any big twists. I think this was a good thing, it’s nice to see more of a “reconstruction” of good guy vs bad guy.

Spoilers -

Steam’s business model does prevent it from pricing its consoles like Sony, Xbox, Nintendo, etc. since they need the console itself to be profitable, not just a means of bringing in games sales.

It’s plausible that they’re taking into account an uptick in overall game sales from this console - at least for me, I’ve been purchasing new games mostly off of steam rather than playstation/nintendo ever since I got a steamdeck - but you’re right that they aren’t going to sell at a loss.

Regardless of the price (and whether or not I even buy one), I think it’s healthy to have another “big” player in the console market.

I suppose the use case would be for journalists, distributing banned books, and so on - pure text-based information. However, video footage is extremely useful in today’s media environment - how many current events do we see first from some tiktok or twitter video, rather than nightly news?

YouTubers really are the way to go. For me, there’s no better way to see if I want to play a game than watching someone play it.

And for story games best played blind, I go by word of mouth.

Yep. There are people who can vote who were born after Portal came out XD

We are living in great times for small studio and indie games!

It has a little more gameplay than past telltale games with its dispatch sections (a bit of strategy, deciding which heroes go on what calls), but otherwise you are right, it’s a fancy choose your own adventure game. They have done some interesting things with superhero tropes so far (e.g., superheroes working out of a corporate call center), but it’s a bit early to tell if they’ll subvert some of my expectations for the “final boss”.

I would be OK with losing out on random novelty hotdog-flavored chips.

That being said, you could get around this problem by focusing on staples (rice, flour, vegetables, salt, etc.) since the vast majority of folks don’t really have a preference on this sort of thing, aside from allergies/gluten free.

I was about to say, almost sounded like you were speaking from experience XD You’ll be the first suspect if a supervillain with your powers ever pops up

Superspeed- quick commute, get chores done fast, visit the world

Has anyone used OpenDesk? Looks like they have a community edition

You mean we’re supposed to actually read the articles before talking about them?! ;)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_vision_dazzle it’s been done before. AI facial recognition gets a little overhyped

Hey man, the playing-pinball-while-a-cat-interferes peertube community is very close-knit (https://video.apz.fi/).

I kid, but it’s true that peertube lacks the dopamine hooks and variety that youtube does. It’s much harder to sink hours into watching a bunch of videos that you’ll only half remember by the next day.

Maybe Marginalia could work for you? I’ve tried using it, but it’s a lot more focused on academic stuff (rather than figuring out song lyrics or which episode some TV quote came from). It’s an “old school” search engine, though, so a bit less convenient than google, duckduckgo, etc. if you weren’t around in 90s/early 00s for that.

When google shoves their ai to the top of search results, its hard not to read it. I’ve been spoiled by ublock and I am no longer used to ignoring the first few things that come up.

Ah, but they were wearing a bright yellow vest! Be honest - would you think twice if you saw someone wearing a safety yellow vest and carrying a drill? Apparently there was construction going on nearby as well, so the basket lift didn’t really stand out.

I suppose you could do it a la “The Dispossesed” where you spend one day/week doing community service