I feel like that’s pretty meaningfully different from the original claim that the US government allows cigarettes to be advertised to children.

Didn’t they close up the loopholes in advertising regulations that Juul exploited?

What? Tobacco is like, the one thing that actually has extremely stringent advertising regulations in the US. When vaping products like Juul came around, they were able to exploit loopholes in those laws, but I think those have pretty much been patched up by now.

As much I agree with the idea of abandoning Discord - honestly, fuck 'em - I just don’t know how I or many other people could practically make the full switch… While I might be able to convince a few of my close friends to go with me to whatever new platform comes about, there’s just no way any larger communities would be able to uproot and leave without losing 90%+ of their members, and that’s only if the owners of those communities are even willing to leave in the first place. Inertia is a powerful thing, and the reality of the situation is that the vast majority of Discord users will not be convinced to leave over this.

I want to defend my privacy, and I want to tell these corporate ghouls to shove it, but at the same time, I don’t want to become a digital hermit. Having to decide between protecting my privacy and cutting myself off from so many valued social connections and communities feels like an impossible choice.

I know I’m not saying anything particularly new or actionable here, I’m just… tired. I’m tired of having to flee from platform after platform into increasingly smaller and more insular corners of the internet to escape the endless cycle of enshittification. I’m tired of what the internet has become, where the only places left where you can exist without being manipulated and exploited by corporate interests are a handful of small, decentralized platforms that are becoming increasingly cut off from the internet at large. I’m just tired of this shit, man.

As an aside, I always hated how Dems completely caved on the terminology of the ACA. They should’ve been saying the words “Affordable Care Act” at every turn, keeping the actual goal of the whole thing more in the popular consciousness. Going along with calling it “Obamacare” implicitly accepted the GOP’s framing of the bill and allowed them to more easily control the narrative.

The DLC car packs contain exclusive cars that cannot be obtained elsewhere. The weekly cars are often “hard-to-find” in that they are generally not available elsewhere until they re-run them, but apparently, now that the game is late in its content cycle, they’ve also added a “backstage pass” thing recently, which allows for easier acquisition of some previous “hard-to-find” vehicles.

There are a ton of base-game vehicles that are not exclusive to any particular time or event. Many can be obtained in the Autoshow, which you spend in-game credits to buy cars outright, or in wheelspins, which are basically lootboxes, but they hand out free spins like candy, to the point where I never felt any pressure to buy more. Most spin reward cars are pretty cheap on the auction house anyway (which also uses in-game currency, no IRL money or anything).

When did that happen? I thought the paid DLCs were the Hot Wheels and Rally expansions, plus the car packs. I don’t remember them locking out previously free content, unless that happened within the last year or two since I stopped playing…

I actually had a lot of fun at first with FH5 in the exact same position. The unlocks flow fast and there’s a ton of stuff to tinker around with and explore, and the racing itself is very beginner-friendly. The difficulty settings and assists are very granular and can be fine-tuned to suit your skill level.

I particularly appreciated that it avoided a linear progression system and didn’t make you start off on the slowest cars and slowly work your way up to the good ones, as it’ll give you some insane hypercars right off the bat. The upgrade system and vehicle tiering also ensures that the “slower” cars are never truly obsolete. You can drive what your like, and the game never punishes you for it (in singleplayer, at least).

However, once I got through most of the single player content available, I started to sour on it at a certain point. The constant drip feed of new content in the weekly challenges was fun at first, but felt like a chore after a while, and it definitely takes advantage of FOMO, as the new unlocks in a given week are exclusive to that week and can’t be obtained anywhere else, unless buying them from another player at often exorbitant rates. They do re-run previous exclusive vehicles in the secondary challenges sometimes, but there’s no telling how long you’ll have to wait for a particular car to come around again if you miss it the first time.

So yeah, your mileage may vary, so to speak, but I did put something like 300-400 hours into it before I dropped it for good, and I don’t regret most of that.

I’m cis male, and I think I do a better job of it than many, though I think there are some lingering effects of cultural expectations and upbringing that don’t always make it easy.

The Wii might’ve had higher sales at its peak, but PS2 had a lot of longevity.

I dunno, I think it’s wheely good.

Every MAGA accusation is a confession.

I don’t know, what does a mockingbird sound like?

I was always disappointed that they bound the skillbar to weapon types and removed secondary professions in GW2. The possibilities for character builds were virtually endless in GW1’s system, and you could make your character really feel like your own. I did play GW2 for a while, and it was fun in its own ways, but the original still holds much more nostalgia for me.

1998 and 2004 have strong cases, as other comments have mentioned, but I think 2007 has got to be up there as well. The Orange Box alone was massively influential, even for just the new-to-'07 releases (TF2, Portal, HL2EP2), and was almost entirely unique - I don’t think we’ve really seen anything like it before or since. Beyond that, you have stuff like Halo 3, CoD 4, Assassin’s Creed, Super Mario Galaxy, Mass Effect, Uncharted, Pokémon Diamond/Pearl, and Guitar Hero 3.

“Subtract 4 wishes”

I like how RealD looks well enough, but the glasses tended to give me a mild headache after a while. I’ve been able to wear VR headsets without much issue in the handful of times I’ve been able to try them, so maybe that would work better, but I don’t think I’ve actually worn one for multiple hours at a time, so who knows.

The thing that I think a lot of people forget about the first Avatar is that it was pretty much the first big blockbuster to be available with those RealD 3D glasses. I distinctly remember wanting to go see it so I could check out RealD and find out if it lived up to the hype.

Of course, it had the James Cameron name recognition, so it was probably going to be pretty successful regardless, but I don’t know if it would have been quite so record-shattering if it weren’t for the novelty of RealD, combined with the higher ticket price of 3D showings.

The longer dems can keep the Epstein issue in the public consciousness, the better. If it slips from the news cycle for too long, the average voter will forget about it, and at that point the whole thing will be moot. It doesn’t matter if they actually succeed, the longer they can draw this out, the more damage it will deal.

I love the gameplay of Dead Rising, but the time limits and save point restrictions really do not mesh well with how I want to play it. The game has the perfect setup to be a sandbox where you could just fuck around with finding silly ways to kill zombies, but the time limits - even if they are as generous as people say - just give me constant anxiety and I can’t really relax and screw around with it like I’d want to.