The kids are alright.

This is the one where we bully our little brother into going back to the world where he can’t walk, right? :P

I feel SO free right now. :P

Canceled Pride? Well, I canceled my sub!

It sounds like they wanted to run someone but had trouble recruiting a candidate:

But Bloom thinks that would-be Democratic candidates were disinclined to challenge a sheriff’s office power structure that tends to be dominated by conservatives, saying, “The people that [party leadership] asked to run were scared; given how conservative law enforcement can be, they didn’t want to blow up their careers.” Unlike other states, Virginia does not require that sheriff candidates have a background in law enforcement.

And later in the article:

That no Democrat filed to run in Chesapeake does not surprise Liam Watson, director of Bluegrass PAC, a Virginia group working to fund and elect downballot Democratic candidates in rural areas of the state. Watson, who is also an elected council member in the city of Blacksburg, knows the dynamic well: His own community, Montgomery County, leans blue but has a Republican sheriff.

“The challenge is finding people who are both qualified and interested,” he told Bolts.

He and many others noted that the most obvious path to being a sheriff is to work as a sheriff’s deputy, and that there are clear disincentives to challenging an incumbent who could then make your life difficult or fire you if you lose. “Nobody wants to run against their boss,” Watson said.

I think she has to act through the Board of Police Commissioners, and I’m not sure she can fire them before their terms are up. She could definitely threaten to not re-appoint them, but I don’t know how much leverage that really buys her.

And those armored bulldozers sometimes destroyed humans along with the houses, such as the case of peace activist Rachel Corrie.

OP already accounted for social situations where you would expect to meet people, though, and his parents seem to think that he should be approaching people in other situations—like in a store, or on the street. I’d be very cautious about that.

IME framegen hasn’t meaningfully reduced the open-world hitching. It gets the framerate nice and smooth while standing still, fighting a bandit or whatever… until you walk a bit and the game becomes CPU-limited while streaming in new cells, at which point you noticeably hitch.

The performance in interior cells (including cities) is very good even on Ultra settings.

I suspect that this is one of the compromises they made by keeping the old engine running under the hood, because as DF notes this also happened in the original.

“If our strict measures were not accepted, then our organization could become careless and it could result in eroding the public’s trust,” he said.

They don’t think telling this guy to starve in his old age over $7 will undermine public trust? It’s undermining my trust in this official’s judgment right now!

I guess I don’t live in Kyoto so they probably don’t give a rat’s ass what I think.

It’s been a long time, but it’s supposed to be coming out this year.

Inspire allies to perform better or push their limits, bolster them against mental damage and heal mental damage they’ve sustained, raise the morale of a group (especially if that group shares my religion). Bonuses to public speaking, negotiation, religious knowledge, etc.

If I belong to a more fire-and-brimstone type religion, perhaps I can intimidate sinners, make my allies more effective against heretics, etc.

“If you’re a masochist who enjoys being punished for little to no reward, this game is for you,” reads another negative review.

Hot damn, they made this update just for me? I was holding off checking out POE2 but I guess I should.

What does she mean there was a “generational shift” that led to people burning CDs? Back in the floppy disk days, everyone was copying floppies—I remember when my grandfather bought a Mac to use at home, and immediately his friends at work loaded him up with copied disks. Which generation is she thinking of that wasn’t pirating a ton of software?

Visit Granddad.

Americans are notoriously terrible at protesting. I was in high school in the '00s and our American history textbook had a sidebar about the 1999 Seattle WTO protests. The bit that stuck with me: a French dignitary interviewed on the scene was unconcerned about the protesters. He pointed to an untouched BMW (or similar luxury car, I forget the exact make). “In Paris,” he said, “That car would be burning.”

The cars make contact so much in this game that it feels like a missed opportunity to not have damage, at least visually. I want to see those cars crumple!

I know it’s typically because of licensing issues, though.

Any% clear!

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It’s bizarre to me that Trump, who talks like he has imperial ambitions, is dismantling the services that run the empire. I can’t tell if he’s senile and being completely puppeteered by Musk, or if he’s lucid but just actually has no idea what any of these agencies do and why it’s in his interest as president to keep them working.