Ah an economist, say no more fam.

What are you talking about? They’re both estimates extrapolated from samples. I think most statisticians would prefer stratified sampling over one company’s payrolls processing, but whatever. Maybe chuds would argue that ADP is so much more efficient/accurate because it’s outside of the “swamp” of govt, it’s certainly an independent data point. I mean I agree with you in that BLS is not reliable either. Real time economics is hard.

If you honestly preferred ADP all along and will continue to espouse it’s superiority when it next contradicts your view rather than confirming it (as it will because data are noisy) then more power to you.

BLS jobs report was a beat, +140k jobs and unemployment down a shade. I agree with you on the themes but it doesn’t help to cherry pick data.

Oh shiiiit, do that and come back and talk to us when you get to the time travel level.

Are we just in the phase of the medium where technology isn’t the defining quality. It would be slightly weird to try to stay at the forefront of, say, novels without any regard for reading classics. Why shouldn’t games be the same?

Like a reverse roko’s bassilisk. Interesting. I mean that way around is at least comforting/ gives main character energy.

“genuinely” herein lies the key. Interesting to pick Jedi as an example because I think we can agree that people who out that on a census or whatever typically have their tongue firmly in cheek. Wicca probably sits somewhere on a spectrum between that and the major religions. You’d be mad naive to assume that everyone holds beliefs exactly as stated. My papi was a priest and we’re pretty sure never believed in god. L Ron Hubbard himself was for sure was grifting FFS. Add to that and most religions can’t even agree what authentic means for their community and LOL

Gell-mann amnesia. Might have to invent a special name for the AI flavour of it.

I once fired a 22 round through the middle of a polo mint without breaking it from 25m away. I framed that shit because likewise, knew that wasn’t happening again. That’s part of the fun of the sport as a an amateur, occasionally chance does funny things.

Not quite never. You just need the tax rate plus marginal change in lost benefits/increased obligations to exceed 100%. For example there’s a breakpoint in the UK around childcare over 100k income that makes it way worth salary sacrificing to get below if you have kids. I can imagine there are similar niche things for small businesses around audit requirements or whatever, but not enough of an expert to know.

US economic output is more than adequate to achieve this already, but we choose instead to concentrate the benefits in the hands of a few.

Regarding tarrifs bringing back manufacturing: https://www.kcl.ac.uk/trumps-tariffs-what-is-behind-them-and-will-they-work “but this is very unlikely to work. Manufacturing has changed, with production now spread across multiple countries in so-called ‘global value chains’. Moving whole supply chains back to the US is going to be prohibitively expensive, result in rising consumer prices and make US-produced goods internationally uncompetitive. The model of manufacturing that underpins Trump’s approach simply hasn’t existed for the best part of 40 years, and is not coming back.”

First pass googling this returns very low information quality. I suspect “calculable” is more more like it than “measurable” but would love to see a source where measurements had been made that showed this effect greater than standard error.

“If not duffers, won’t drown. If duffers, better drowned.”

Avoiding Gell-Mann amnesia! Unfortunately, to even get to this question you have to be expert enough in one area to see through the BS… Not a luxury everyone is afforded.

I can’t help comparing it (unfavourably) to baldurs gate 1. The story just didn’t hook me the same way.

I haven’t played a lot of souls, but elden ring death (both of non-boss enemies and protagonist) is super toothless. What made it more relevant in previous games?

Omg yes. It was not just a corridor. It was a send up of every game corridor game that I had played to that point. Taking a design limitation and making it a compelling plot twist was exactly what made bioshock awesome. One of my top 5 gaming moments of all time.

For me grind is when the gameplay loop is motivated by reward not exploration and plays out the same every time.

Good gameplay can come from a feeling of freshness because there are lots of possibilities, because rng or because player options (say, slay the spire), or from lots of genuinely novel content (say, elden ring).

It doesn’t feel like a balancing act at all. I just want more of the latter and less of the former, but maybe some people really do play for repetition?

It had a single player campaign too! Deck builder pvp gets too sweaty for me, but I really like deck builder RPGs.

Couldn’t find a good primary source to dig into it. But from Ipsos:

“I believe the preference for physical discs amongst next gen gamers reflects the potential value they derive from the pre-owned market,” commented Ipsos director Ian Bramley to MCV, “which is holding up the preference for physical - this is unlike the music and film markets.”

https://www.gamesindustry.biz/64-percent-prefer-physical-media-to-digital-distribution

I’m sure there’s a lot of generational and market segment differences. I never really understood “collecting” games. But I guess people do that in digital too with their huge steam sale backlogs!

I’m sure not many people care about physical vs digital per se. It’s the arbitrary locks by servers, digital storefront, DRM etc. So that when you pay your money you have no idea what you are getting and what your rights are. Physical game media was a simpler time from that perspective (play in perpetuity, don’t redistribute, cool cool that seems like a fair trade) and resulted in better pricing and experience for consumers.

I’d accept “move on” if the argument was just “muh pretty box” (god knows there are plenty of ways to buy pretty boxes of vidya IP) but consumer rights are surely worth fighting for, or we get needlessly bled for ever more dollars.