Sorry to come in a week later with a hot take.

But something I think would be awesome, probably for GOG, would be for them to offer a backup service where they will put your GOG library onto M-Disc Blurays in 100Gb increments for a nominal fee, say $40 plus postage.

For people who game preservation matters to it would be a solid statement. I doubt many of us can afford a salt mine to store the disks in but they are still about as long lived as you are going to get in a format that’s accessible for a home user (let’s be honest those disks will likely outlast the drives to read them with).

For GOG the costs would be fairly minimal and since M-Disc is a pretty valid backup media they would gain that capability from a business perspective.

Just something that sprang to mind while I was reading this thread.

Well yea, but also no. I think a lot of their ability to operate is the veneer of legitimacy they have, my suggestion above, while funny, was mainly facetious, however if we could figure out a way of stripping that legitimacy away they might see more pushback from the next company they try to convince they represent a statistically large chunk of the population.

In this exact situation if Visa had just said to them: “We will take that under advisement.” Then filed the whole thing with the crayon scrawl “letters” they get from a certain “BLEACH BLONDE BAD BUILT BUTCH BODY” about not letting the Jews buy any more space lasers. Then no one would be getting rights taken away from them.

Posted this elsewhere so just going to copy paste here but with regards to Collective Shout:

I think we need to get this group to weigh in on the content of certain holy books. Surely as a secular organisation they will have no problem demanding that the bible and qur’an be banned (I bet I know which one they actually would like banned).

After all we don’t want kids exposed to books that contain incest, sex, violence, rape, etc. I’m sure there are some parts of Ezekiel they will want editted at the absolute minimum.

I imagine balkanisation would be one way to make them slightly less visible/insufferable, and you know they would love some factional infighting.

Every time they get brought up they should be forced to confront that the people pulling their strings are most likely engaging in all the things they want banned from culture (regardless of culture or intent). Once they are forced to start lobbying Visa and MasterCard to block transactions to religious bodies I will accept they genuinely believe in the drivel they leak. Until then its performative puritanism.

P.s. not a fan of religion of any stripe, but I would feel as violently opposed to censoring them as I am to censoring anything else, I will accept it if its the only responsible solution until then alternative can be found.

I was going to ask how he knew it was Arch, but I feel like that is just setting up the next comment.

I don’t know your teachers or situation and I am going to wildly generalise here, but having worked with teachers, they were probably just their best.

They are teaching a syllabus they didn’t write (you can only put so much make up on that pig) to a group of largely disengaged students, for generally insufficient pay.

They probably just wanted to make it through the day without contemplating self harm.

A spirited contrarian student who fancies themselves an intellectual can be dealt with the ideal way, engaging them, acknowledging the short comings of teaching content to a wide range of intellects/engagement levels.

Or the less ideal way, draconian authority. Sounds like you ran up against the former. Sorry that was your experience.

I’m kinda looking forward to finding out which Chinese OEM is building this thing and how they will be contorting the definition of Made in USA to apply it here.

The signs of quality and attention to detail are already there for all to see!

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I imagine that a society that votes in a wannabe fascist dictator will continue to be a bastion of safety for people of different racial backgrounds. I know if I was fleeing violence and gangs I look for somewhere with a nice welcoming camp just waiting for me.

For clarification I am Australian so I have a bit of experience with a national bias of racism leading to poor outcomes for asylum seekers.

I am taking a more positive view than I was about what’s happening over there though. I think that the Trump presidency may well serve as an unambiguous demonstration of the end results of allowing democracy to become necrotic. I really hope Australians heed this lesson before our next election, although I won’t be at all surprised if they don’t.

So I was thinking about the way he worded this, 25% tariff until the border crossings stop. I think he might be onto a 4D chess move here.

If he tanks the US economy so badly that it’s financially detrimental to cross the border then the flow of people across the border will definitely come down. If he tanks the economy hard enough we may even see the flow reverse, at which point he can lift the tariffs and declare the job done.

He is already happy to make Americans ignorant, illiterate, and spiteful to outsiders; is he really going to baulk at making them dirt poor as well?