This image would be funnier without the caption, I think.

Does Gemini edit images? If it does my guess would be that at some point someone asked Gemini to obscure the identities of the original posters instead of doing it themselves (see: they have the same profile pic but different handles, and the reply has the wrong handle in the “replying to” section). I bet this is also why the color is all fucked up.

Edit: The original explanation I had here was that a laser burns pits in the CD material but that was wrong, apparently only pressed discs use physical pits in the material. The laser used in a home CD burner changes the color of a photosensitive dye on a recordable CD. So I think actually “burning” is due to a misunderstanding (which I had until I just looked it up) of how a home CD writer works.

I use Youtube a lot. If I see a video from a creator I don’t know, or from one I don’t care that much about, and the thumbnail sets off my clickbait alarms, I just open the three dots menu and click “Don’t recommend channel.” I don’t think it’s a big problem, but it does annoy me and this significantly reduces the amount that I have to put up with it.

Sometimes if a thumbnail is borderline I’ll open it in a new tab so I can entertain it for a few minutes and see if they pay off. If they don’t, they get "don’t recommend"ed.

I’ve also done this for creators who put the “like and subscribe” ask before I’ve actually seen the content they’re asking me to subscribe to, if I’m in a particularly petty mood.

This article is about the big gap in similar games that occurred after the release of Icewind Dale 2 in 2002. And as the article says, it has nothing to do with their popularity among gamers, it was due to retailers throwing their weight around. There weren’t as many good options for direct-to-consumer sales at that time, so you had to sell the game to retailers before you could sell it to customers.

The machine seems to be called “Cashnado Alert” so I think you’re onto something about the touch screen mechanics.

I’m still on Pandora and honestly have no idea how they stack up. I just use it as a radio station on long drives.

It’s a very faithful remake of MGS3. You can play with classic controls or modern controls.

If you play with the classic controls, it’s basically the same game, plus a few new collectibles. The new controls come with a modern camera system and some balance changes to accommodate the increased player freedom (the tranq gun has bullet drop in this mode, for example). You can change between control modes during the game, but doing so will reload your last checkpoint.

So it’s good, because MGS3 was good, but it’s not $80 good. And like the article says, at $80 for what is mostly a graphical upgrade you would expect to get all the bells and whistles… but some of them are conspicuously missing.

I learned up through 12 x 12 in 2nd grade. Some of them were easier than others. I remember drilling with my grandfather for hours to memorize the ones I was having trouble with. The incentive was that if I learned them, he’d buy me a GameBoy game I wanted. I did in fact get the game when I managed to master multiplication—it was Mole Mania, a sokoban-style puzzle game with the gimmick that there is an underground layer you can move through that also has its own obstacles.

He absolutely would have sold your data if there were any buyers for it. Microsoft was still a terrible company in the Clippy era, there just were fewer opportunities to be terrible in this particular way at the time.

You can only invite the vampire in if you’re inside the house. If the judge signed the warrant while inside the house for some reason, the vampire could enter. But in the usual case where they were anywhere else, it wouldn’t count.

I suspect that for people who spend a large amount of time in the house, the quality of “inside-ness” rubs off on them: you can probably text your vampire friend the location of your spare key and ask them to check on your cat, even if you’re not there. But someone who has never been inside can’t reasonably offer an “invitation.”

These lists of red flags make me feel like I must be a replicant. I wrote a comment just like that one, em dash and all, on a different site just the other day, with my own organic brain!

My first instinct was to use an em dash instead of that last comma, but it seemed too on the nose.

Tried to go to an event at my favorite bar last week and it was sold out, so I can’t confirm the issue.

I know the official term is “legacy Umamusume” but everyone I’ve seen talk about them who played the Japanese release calls them “parents.”

I love learning new rules. It’s honestly almost as much fun to me as actually playing the game.

Nah man, the older I get the less I trust adults. They let me be one and I’m the biggest fuckup I’ve ever met!

OP already accounted for social situations where you would expect to meet people, though, and his parents seem to think that he should be approaching people in other situations—like in a store, or on the street. I’d be very cautious about that.

I guess the video games probably aren’t canon, but I think it was The Force Unleashed that “revealed” that Vader intentionally planted the seeds of the Rebellion to create an opportunity to overthrow Palpatine, which makes all the times he or his troopers “fail” to stop the heroes make more sense.

Inspire allies to perform better or push their limits, bolster them against mental damage and heal mental damage they’ve sustained, raise the morale of a group (especially if that group shares my religion). Bonuses to public speaking, negotiation, religious knowledge, etc.

If I belong to a more fire-and-brimstone type religion, perhaps I can intimidate sinners, make my allies more effective against heretics, etc.

I feel like this list has some games that are too new to put on a “most influential” list. Let’s give it at least a few years to see how Baldur’s Gate 3 and Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 influence the industry.

On the other end, how is Rogue not on the list? The number of games calling themselves “roguelikes” or “roguelites” has been ballooning every year for the better part of a decade now, and some of its ideas have found their way into other genres, especially the use of procedurally generated level layouts.

Edit: Ohhhhh the poll methodology was to ask people to pick one game, and then they sorted them by popularity. So even though I think Rogue is definitely a top-20-most-influential game, it’s harder to argue for it being top 1. But… that makes it even crazier that KCD2 is on the list. A significant number of people voted for KCD2 as “THE most influential game of all time”? It just came out!