From what I understand, they’ve moved on from that structure. I believe that was one of the things talked about after the release of HL:A, with one of the employees saying that it was part of the reason the game actually got finished. That said, its been a while and even assuming I’m not misremembering information rarely leaves Valve, so I could be wrong.

Edit: I’m wrong. See sp3ctr4l’s comment below.

As much as I like Valve’s work, I don’t think thats a good fit for them. Their staff seem to enjoy working on difficult technical tasks, and lose interest very fast when it comes to mundane maintenance, thus their numerous underutilized and unmaintained features throughout Steam and their games. A payment processor seems like exactly the sort of thing that would get forgotten about a month or two after it gets finished.

Same thing applies, but the article suggests that its probably PayPal in this case.

Not suprising, and given the nature of most of the games removed, debatably reasonably, but it still highlights the need to reduced reliance on the few big American payment processors like PayPal when they can effectively regulate what can and cannot be sold online.

The problem isn’t the length, its the fact that stories are warped or straight-up built around every single (often not even) loose thread from the original trilogy and to a lesser extent, the prequels. For example, the Madalorian was great for the first season, where yes, it was episodic, but it did still have an overarching plot that built up to a climatic final battle. Where it started to run into problems was when it had to tie back into the original plot. Mandalorians lost all mystique, pacing was hampered by exposition, and the focus was draw away from the main characters and the plot in service of tie-ins to Ashoka and the main franchises.

Ultimately, it should be about telling the best stories. Sometimes, that might be episodic as worked well for Mandalorian, sometimes a continuous plot like Andor, and sometimes it is a full movie that does fit alongside the original cannon like Rogue One.

The fact that I can’t tell if this is parody or not is sad.

As I noted, there is also a lot more money involved in movie production compared to retail. On the actor/writer side, you have more individuals involved who don’t risk starving when they form a union, and on the studio side, they can less afford to delay or trash shows and movies. Compare that to, for example, walmart workers who likely have little in the way of savings, nonetheless funding to establish a union, and work for a company that could close down a dozen stores to kill a union an not even notice it in their balance sheet.

Again, I’m not saying they shouldn’t unionize, but given the enviroment, the system is stacked against them. Blaming vulnerable workers for not unionizing is like saying the poor don’t have money because they didn’t work hard enough, or didn’t invest in the right things. Instead of blaming them, we need to be looking at ways to support them. This might be pushing legislators to improve workers rights and social safety nets, it might be helping them to join larger unions (such as how a lot of IT workers end up covered by other unions), or it might be providing more tools and education on how to organize into unions, ultimately, the important thing is recognizing that these are people who need help and trying to offer it to them rather than jist telling them to pull themselves up by their bootstraps.

I’m not sure how recoverable it is at this point, but if you want Star Wars to act as a forever-story, don’t treat it as one single story. Its okay if plot doesn’t directly build with each release. Its okay if it doesn’t connect to other parts of the cannon. Its okay if you have no shared characters. Hell, its even okay (if not ideal) if some media contradicts each other. The important part is making good stories, and if a new peice of media wouldn’t work when attached to a larger plot, don’t attach it to the larger plot. Simple as that.

Look at something like 40K, for example. While yes, there is a “main” plot, its only a small part. Honestly, fans often outright ignore the “main plot” Horus Hersey books, in favour of the more fun and compartmentalized books like the Eisenhorn Trilogy or the ork books because those are the books that most revel in the setting and themes of 40K and aren’t burdened by dozens of other books that they have to tie in to.

Its a lot easier said than done, esspecially in an easy-to-enter, oversaturated field like tech or retail. There are so many workers, its hard to organize on a meaningful scale, and the barrier to entry is often low enough that the company can fire the whole team and have a new one overnight. So far as I can think of, the only fields sharing a similar low barrier to entry and abundance of workers, that has successfully unionised are all in hollywood, with things like writting and acting, where there was far more money involved.

Thats not to say people shouldn’t unionise or that its impossible, but given the current state of the economy its also absurd to directly put blame on those who are most vulnerable, least likely to succeeded, and most likely to face retaliation.

If you’re going to victum blame, it should really be on senior staff that are harder to replace, and other unions for not showing more support. Or, you could just blame the people actually responsible: the rich and powerful who built and maintain the current system.

Edit: Just to provide an example for context: Stats are iffy, but most seem to agree that about 15 million people work in retail the US. You’ll need a significant portion of the workforce in the union to be able to negotiate. Its obviously more complicated than a straight percentage, but for the sake of example, we’ll say you need 20% membership. That means you’ll need a union (or collective of unions) of 3 million people, matching the NEA and dwarfing unions like the Teamsters, SEIU, and United Auto Workers. Again, I’m not saying we shouldn’t try, but this isn’t a simple or easy process. For those involved, its risky or outright dangerous, and they’ll need all the support they can get if they want to have any chance of success.

From what I’ve heard (although I have no real sources) a lot of the rich Africans are similarly wealthy to many of the rich Americans. Its mostly owners of resource extraction sites and refineries, similar to oil barons and mining companies in American history, but with even less regulations. That said, you don’t really hear about them as much because the local governments aren’t strong enough to challenge them (or even collect accurate information on them) and they’re less interested in flaunting their wealth to the poor.

Basically, the Republicans are now saying that they won’t release the Epstein list after all, because no client list actually exists.

He addresses this some. 120v is still a lot faster than boiling water on the stove. Coffee makers are significant, but boiling water in a microwave is generally a bad idea, given the risk of superheating (not that people don’t do it.)

Actually, the biggest tell is that for how long it is, it’s mostly noise with little signal. Some of it doesn’t even make sense, “check what instances or users you’re federated with”?

So like someone dumb trying to sound smart, or someome trying to fill space. See my previous comment about tankies.

You mean using subheadings? Yes, AI often does that, but it doesn’t have to, nor do people avoid it.

Half the stuff I write gets flagged as AI generated when put into a “”“detection”“” service because its too average. You can’t reliability filter AI text from non-AI text. Hell, even a lot of the tankie rhetoric here reads like a hallucinating AI, spitting out over-long sentences with little meaning and no overarching argument.

To try and answer what you’re asking genuinely, since I don’t see indication that this is bad-faith:

The reason African-Americans and some black people get a “pass” to use it isn’t because it isn’t offensive. Its because they’re expected to have a better understanding of their own oppression than someone who hasn’t lived with it, and because it can generally be assumed to not have racist connotations. The word has such heavy history that if someone who isn’t black uses it, it is usually (and reasonably) assumed to be racism. Even among those who are black, theres a lot of nuance, with many feeling uncomfortable with saying it, either because the word is so loaded that it can be offensive reguardless, or because they don’t feel like they’re connected enough to the history to have the “right” to say it (I.E. someone who grew up in a black-majority country might feel this way.)

Making immigration more difficult already benefits the wealthy. Not having birthright citizenship won’t change that.

I think you’re misinterpreting my intentions. I believe that making immigration and citizenship easier is best. I just also believe that Jus Soli is an ineffective band-aid solution, that doesn little to help the common man.

I’m not informed enough to be very specific in execution, but in my mind, immigration should be extremely generous. Ideally, I’d say it should be effectively unlimited, but I know there are economic considerations that need to be taken into account, such as the rate of housing construction. That said, I don’t feel confident enough to outline specifics beyond that. I have nothing against immigrants or immigration.

Its purely citizenship, and the political power it involves specifically that I believe shouldn’t be given out based on geographic location at one instant alone. Given that its effectively giving you power to change how the country is run, it should be given to those who are directly affected by how the country is run. Ideally, I’d almost want a system where someone can’t be more invested in a different country, although again, I’m not sure about specifics. Prehaps something along the lines of a limit of how much property can be owned outside the country relative to within the country, so regular people qualify easily, but someone can’t get citizenship while they own a dozen houses elsewhere. Again, I’m not an expert, and not trying to advocate for a specific solution, just that immigration be made easier and citizenship shouldn’t be something you can buy.

Edit: fixed a couple typos.

We don’t know for every one for certain, but we have plausable explanations or backgrounds for nearly every cryptid and mythological creature. Usually, the explanation is either a diseased animal, misidentified bones, or someone looking to make money.

So we give up with a half-measure, that helps the rich moreso than the poor without addressing the underlying issue?

This isn’t a helpful or sustainable approach. Should we give up on climate change because reducing carbon output is hard, or say, “Well, as long as you don’t use coal, its good enough.” Of course not. Not to mention that making immigration and/or citizenship more accessible isn’t an impossible task at all, esspecially relative to climate change or weath inequality.

In those few, extremely rare cases are enough to fuck up a nation’s politics, immigration isn’t the problem.

They’re rare, but not impossible, esspecially when it comes to the involvement of powerful/rich governments, corporations or individuals. We already have enough of that, no reason to make it easier for effectively no gain.

Edit: esspecially considering that ability to chose the location your child is born in is based primarily off wealth rather than moral character or anything else positive.