Space Ghost; “Moltar, eject the warp core!”
Moltar: “We don’t have a warp core.”
Space Ghost: “Good work!”

As I said elsewhere, there is no doubt that any attempted ‘boycott’ has already been factored into their calculations.

If you can shatter their predictions, good on you. But I’m not holding my breath

The loss of your revenue has already been factored into the decision. They know some people will think and act as you do. It’s just a question of how many.

Maybe you can get enough people to move the needle, I guess. But I’m pretty sure they have a pretty good grasp on how the silent majority will behave

IMO you’re aiming your ire at the wrong target. This is what happens when major economies apply tarrifs to components used in retail products that ship globally.

They’re not doing it to “appease Americans”, they’re doing it to protect their bottom line. Blame capitalism. Blame “fiduciary responsibility”. Blame Trump. But the execs at these companies don’t really have a choice here.

It works like this:

• Tarrifs, if passed only to US consumers, would raise the price of the product by, let’s say, 30%
• A bean counter determined that the loss of revenue from decreased sales in the US with that kind of price hike would be more than the loss of revenue if they spread the cost across the globe.
• In other words, the math looks something like (US-sales@130% + Global-sales@100%) < (US-sales@115% + Global-sales@115%)
• Fiduciary responsibility forces leadership to do whatever is best for their bottom line, or they risk being ousted AND sued by shareholders for failing to act in their best interests
• Now that they know which approach is more profitable, their hands are tied unless they can make a REALLY compelling case why taking a big loss now will create a bigger win later (which is extremely hard to do in this kind of situation)

The whole system fucking sucks. It’s grotesque. But that’s what’s going on here. Not some “oh no don’t anger the Americans” politicking.

It’s about dollars. It’s always about dollars. And multiple countries have literally written laws to force publicly traded companies to maximize dollars for shareholders.

I don’t say all this as some argument for buying Xbox/Sony products. I simply want to point out that the problem here is the system itself, because even if Sony or Microsoft were to drop out of the business tomorrow, the next publicly traded company to fill the void would do the exact same thing.

And there are plenty of other problems with privately owned businesses.

Pick your poison 🤷

Wesley figured it out?! Wesley?! This is a real low point. Yeah, this one hurts.

It shouldn’t be that confusing, considering this is literally the challenge lawmakers (honest ones, as rare as they are) face.

There’s a great blog post by Neil Gaiman (despite recent revelations about his misconduct) that talks about “why we must defend icky speech”.

Long story short, the law is a blunt instrument. If you cannot clearly and accurately define the terms being used in the language of the law then you wind up with a law that can be applied beyond the intended scope. Like when you write laws about freedom of religion and then wind up with The Satanic Temple erecting statues of Baphomet in court houses. Or banning the Bible from library because it contains depictions of violence and sexual deviancy or promiscuity

These issues aren’t just academic. They have real-world consequences. Like, there have literally been legal rulings made based on the presence or absence of an Oxford comma

Is that kind of pedantry useful to the average conversation? No, of course not. But there are people trying to make laws that target women, or trans women, and if they can’t accurately define what a woman is then the law can be used to target people they didn’t want targeted.

Which is one of many reasons why trying to target trans folks with legal authority is a fool’s errand

Another non-blahaj here to say FUCK YEAH, Ada.

Deplatforming works. Demanding civility from people under attack by disingenuous, insincere “intellectuals” is so much more than just tone policing; it’s direct enablement of disenfranchisement and allowing the spread of harm.

It’s easy to be bad. It’s hard to be good. When bad people are allowed to express their evil ideologies, it is much easier for people to pick up the evil than for the righteous to defend the good.

We cannot be tolerant of intolerance.

So, again, FUCK YEAH, Ada. You rock for protecting your users AND the rest of the world by contributing to the deplatforming of bigots.

Polkadot Stingray

And anything else on my Japanese music playlist :D

https://music.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL1qp2kWRqMd77nsVXr2jG5um4DpMWNn5Y

whoosh

Sounds like somebody needs a Snickers™ 😏

It’s an older meme, sir, but it checks out

Great scene. Carter dismantling the dummy is very satisfying

In almost exactly the same sense as our own brains’ neural networks are nonsensical :D

Ooo fun writing challenge. *Knuckles crack*

Ok, so hear me out:

Warp Drives use up massive amounts of energy in a single burst. We all know acceleration and deceleration are the things that are costly in space, not maintaining momentum. So you can design against that, right? Massive capacitors that are easily replaced, that store the charge before passing it to the warp drive, which only needs to operate for a short time.

Shield emitters, on the other hand, need constant power running through them to generate the necessary energy field. Like a powered magnet, it’s only by running current through the device that the field is generated. And any time you move large amounts of power continuously like that you’re going to generate heat and degrade the medium.

So it comes down to the fundamental nature of the task being performed by the hardware.

This really only applies to full time employees on a W-2 who also declared less than the actual number of exemptions they are eligible for.

Personally I always declare no exemptions, let them take the maximum amount, and then enjoy my fat return every March.

But lots of people claim too many exemptions for withholdings and end up owing money, are on a 1099 and don’t have withholdings at all so need to pay their full taxes at the end of the year, or are a business and always owe taxes at the end of the year (unless they have fancy deductions to offset or defer their tax burden)

Nailed it. This was a perfect explanation. Thank you!

I’m from c/all and WTF does this mean? I understand base 10, 2, and 12 and the concept of a base in general but…wut???

“midnight” and “noon” for sure.

… And now I’m thinking about all those super heros and villains named “midnight” and their logical counter-characters “noon”

I never said anything about the quality of the games. I’m speaking specifically to the monetization bullshit.

As I said elsewhere: budget bloat happens in a lot of places. Greedy executive and publishers is one place. Overambitious design goals that get scrapped is another. There’s also bad tools workflows, mismanagement, and any number of other contributing factors.

But even indie devs are getting screwed on pricing and making far less than they deserve to be in many cases.

If people keep buying CoD and Assassins Creed, devs will keep making them. And if they can’t increase retail price to cover the budget they will find other ways to do it.

I almost replied from my inbox; glad someone said it before I even got to it haha