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.

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

Oh yeah, that’s definitely around the time when games started getting “big”, especially with Halo.

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 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

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

Has the concept of UBI been around long enough to fulfill your requirements? A 20-year study across a large population would of course be superior, but shorter-length studies with less people are necessary to prove/disprove whether those large scale studies should be funded. Not to mention the ethical implications of forcing someone into a large scale study like that before any results have been shown at all.

I think it’s fine to be skeptical of anyone considering UBI to be “case closed”, but small studies being done before large studies is standard practice. You can’t give that kind of grand scale funding to every hypothesis that pops into someone’s head, so it’s a reasonable way of determining what shows promise and should be looked into more.

It is a good point, though I suppose the argument would be that it’s easier for a bridge builder to find paying work than an artist

Well, there are plenty of famous artists who only became famous after they died. Contemporary popularity doesn’t guarantee historic/cultural impact.

I’m not aware of the specific requirements of this program, but Iteland also has a case for cultural preservation, particularly with works in the Irish language, which may not have the international appeal necessary to make a good profit but are important for intrinsic reasons to Ireland.

There’s also the case to be made that in order to become a great artist, you must first be a bad artist - and there aren’t that many jobs for internships/apprenticeships in the arts, especially as some of the more “basic” jobs (cheap graphic arts, copywriters, muzak, etc.) are snapped up by AI.

I think there is an interesting discussion to be had about what an artist must have in order to qualify for something like this. I would also be concerned with “antiestablishment” works possibly being excluded.

I haven’t blocked anyone here, but on Tumblr I started unfollowing folks who posted about doom and gloom all the time. That site’s more conducive to memes and TV show discussions than it is discussion about news/politics, and I don’t like scrolling through a bunch of superhero memes and then getting hit with a post about the latest atrocity in the world. That stuffs important, but it’s not healthy to fixate on it all the time.

It’s important to curate what you’re doing so that you dont fall into a doomscrolling trap or get ragebaited into arguments that go nowhere.