And three fingers tapping is often a middle-click or wheel-click, which is often a shortcut for ‘open in new tab’ while browsing the web. On some linux systems it is also a shortcut for paste if in a text input field.

When someone is telling him how great and wonderful and smart and clever and chosen-by-god and handsome and wise and legitimate and righteous and not criminally liable and wealthy they think he is?

More effort than designing invasive software to work on all the different hardware and software configurations used by all the players? Still have to pay engineers to work on all of that or, worse, (shudder) contractors. That shit’s expensive.

Oof, 1d4 psychic damage.

There is a line. People who make their money from assets have been doing well. People who make their money from wages have not.

Oh, come, everyone. Come see the Moral Man who was so Righteous and Moral that he spent half his response on telling us all how Virtuous he is, and indeed already was, before it was even cool.

/s

You know what system you can really readily predict the hardware and software of as a game developer? The one you use as your server. You know what has access to everything that happens in the game? Your server. You know what could run software over which the players have zero control? Your server. You know what could maybe use that ability to run sanity checks on the values coming from the players?

You don’t have to understand why they want something for them to want it. You don’t know exactly why someone is cutting into your lane either. You just know it benefits their goals. That’s why they do it. So would you think it’s fine for them to do it?

I don’t. I’m saying it’s really hard to tell why people aren’t doing something without putting in a lot of effort.

If someone says no to an offered glass of red wine at dinner, it can be very hard to tell why. They could be an oenophile, and it’s not good enough. They could be a former alcoholic not wanting to fall off the wagon. They could be pregnant. They could just prefer white. They could be practicing moderation and not taking a second glass. They could be a designated driver. They could recognise the vintner as one who supports a cause with which they disagree. It could be for some other reason not mentioned here. It could even be true they really want it but don’t want to be seen wanting it, or don’t want to take one glass because what they really want is the bottle and it just feels better to say no to the whole thing rather than get less than what they want, or they don’t want to ruin their ability to enjoy really shitty wine by tasting better wine, and so on, and so on, so they say they don’t want it even when that’s not strictly true.

You wouldn’t know without digging in and expending a lot of time and effort. The same applies to those ‘milestones.’ We can see people without them, but it’s not obvious in what ratios the big group of ‘people over age XX who aren’t homeowners’ can be divided as to ‘why.’ I’d like to know, but I don’t have several million dollars to send out swarms of researchers.

No, we just have to outnumber or overpower the fools who defend them. We don’t need 100% agreement, just enough to get a ban in place.

To understand the ideas present in this meme, you must understand a basic level of anthropology, (not a huge ask, but an ask) the concept of ‘the orient,’ (much bigger ask) critique of that concept, (less rare knowledge but often found only through right-wing criticism of the critique) ‘decolonization,’ (same again) and liberalism. (Same again.) If I fail to understand university level academic discourse on a field I don’t work in, this is utter gibberish. This does not teach anyone who is not already somewhat familiar with the discourse anything. It might as well be in a foreign language to most readers, and, again, oversimplifies the ideas which are being obliquely mentioned.

If it’s about saving money? Minecraft. It’s been around for an age, but it has so many variations through modding, you get years of play for the one price.

If it’s about mechanical quality? Spelunky. It’s smooth and nearly completely glitch-free. It’s elegant in its simplicity to enjoyability ratio. It has enough variation to make every run a bit different, but not so much that every run is just wild blind choices and (un)lucky draws.

If it’s about story quality? Pacific Drive. It goes on sale fairly regularly and goes below $10 on steam. The story and gameplay are nicely intertwined, well written, and well voice-acted.

Technically, yes, at least insofar as the elimination of a specific ‘moderator’ position. You could find ways to distribute the duty to users or something, but you still need something to control content or you will end up with something posted which brings government level antagonism.

This is theoretically true of everything under capitalism. However, it’s not the only force involved.

On the system designer’s side, unless there is a MASSIVE drop in sales directly attributable to the absence of a particular feature, not including that feature decreases cost which increases profit. Any company that tries to court the minority who like the feature will either have to cut into their profits or charge enough to cover the feature, which will effectively price out a section of the buyers from affording it. Either way, that’s probably a lot of money lost. That extra money the other companies gets can be put toward marketing, which in turn shrinks the market share for the feature-focused manufacturer even further, which nets them less money, which… You get the idea. It’s the same thing that happened in American health insurance. The companies that did all the things Americans hate used their profits to run the companies that didn’t into the ground. Now, all that’s left are the ones with which people are familiar.

On the consumer side, they can only choose from what actually is available. Consoles are just shitty computers for people who don’t want to learn to ‘do computers.’ The options are brand A, brand B, and brand C. That’s it. You can’t demand a console that lets you play games from all three. It doesn’t exist. You can’t get the one with a cup holder. It doesn’t exist. If it’s not available as an option, you can’t do a write-in vote like it’s a ballot. You take what’s available, because the alternative is being left alone with your own thoughts and facing off against the FOMO millions of dollars in marketing has built regarding the latest flagship products.

What the…

Are we all sure the Epstein class hasn’t started the next leg of our slide into cyberpunk dystopian hell by prepping a McConnell clone and the reason they’ve been out of office so much is the time spent preparing for the brain swap?

There are two primary reasons people use filler words.
One is to maintain possession of the role of ‘speaker’ in the conversation because, if you stop for a while, someone might think you’re done (if it sounded like the end of a thought) or have broken down trying to think of what to say. Spending time in environments where people have high demands for time or competition for attention can make these things worse. The other is social fear or anxiety about how your message will be received, or over one’s correctness and certainty. ‘I am claiming this thing for myself,’ has the same ultimate goal as ‘Nah, lowkey f’real, I was kinda maybe thinking of nabbing that,’ but the use of the extra ‘filler’ words and slang is designed to obfuscate the meaning, making it passive agressive, forcing the listener to parse the extra layers of obfuscation before having a chance to object, and leaving a verbal avenue of retreat open if someone does object, allowing them to say, ‘No, I said I was thinking about it.’ Spending time in environments where one has to deal with openly agressive people can often make people seek out these verbal conflict avoidance techniques.

There aren’t enough guys. We have billions of people. Too many of the ones we have heard of are related.

‘In the Miso Soup’ by Murakami Ryu might do what you are looking for. Found it by accident looking at Murakami Haruki. Japanese guy is a local guide for an unusual american.

I didn’t finish it but there is also ‘Baby Jesus Buttplug’ by Carlton Mellick. Been meaning to get back to it at some point. WTF is his whole schtick.

The works of Cormack McCarthy are also wtf books, but less in the ‘WHAT THE FUCK!’ more in the vein of ‘Oh, god. What… the fuck…’

I sound like a broken record but, BAN ADVERTISING. Along with all the pretty well established secondary bad effects of advertising, the most basic direct effect of it is lying to people. If people weren’t deluged daily with lies about how they should think of this or that company, they wouldn’t be so readily deluded into thinking of a company like a person with a positive effect on their world.

It can be very hard to disentangle the cause and effect of ‘not wanted so it doesn’t count as a failure to not get it,’ vs ‘can’t do it, so won’t say I want it,’ vs ‘might want to do it but everyone and everything is getting fucked so hard these days and I don’t want to watch my kid get fucked, so not going to bother having one.’