See the trick is to work with computers, not people. People are what fuck everything up. Especially if it's customers and not coworkers.

Fair, but given the degradation of gaming these days I think a lot of people who aren't paying attention have an outdated and understated view of just how bad things are. A parent might be thinking: wow had a subscription, so this game with micro transactions isn't all that bad, not recognizing just how tuned modern predatory gaming has become at extracting money and addicting its users.

WoW mostly addicted people to playing (consuming their time), you can go hours and hours of gameplay without inputting more money. But mobile games maximize extracting maximal profit for minimal gameplay. There's no functional difference between a gacha pull and a slot machine pull. It's an endless, mindless set of pretty lights where you just hit the buy button over and over and over. If you sat people down and made them watch (with a running cost total) most people would immediately see the resemblance to a casino.

I think it's helpful to break things down into more granular levels of predation, just to help clarify how bad it's getting, even if all of it is problematic.

I don't allow myself to play any mobile games anymore. Spent like $300 on one of those idle games. Not worth it. I refuse to play any free to play titles at all, no matter the platform these days.

Haven't played WoW in awhile, but do they now have 'you can spend unlimited money' mechanics? Previously it was just stuff like mounts and character transfers and stuff. I know you can also sell tokens for gold, but I thought gold kind of becomes irrelevant at some point. The best gear is bind on drop right? Theoretically I guess you can pay gold for boost runs, which probably counts as an endless money sink.

I kind of have a mental separation in my head between games with unlimited money sinks (like games with energy mechanics) where you can spend and spend and spend and it never stops, vs games that have a finite of things to buy.

It can still be way over priced, but there's a maximum amount of money you can throw at the game. Even Diablo 4, with a relatively huge and highly priced number of cosmetic items has effectively a maximum price (though every new cosmetic increases that price). Vs Diablo Immortal allowing you to spend 10s of thousands of dollars and still need to keep spending. I think unlimited money mechanics should be outlawed or at least fully classified as gambling and regulated accordingly.

I how you're doing better, but also this sounds like the start to a fun romantic comedy or bro movie. Two strangers doing research on the best bridge to jump off of becoming unlikely friends.

Isn't audible the monopoly on audiobooks? And I thought you can get podcasts from tons of places.

Honestly the last decade plus does feel like the lead up paragraph in a history textbook to some major paradigm shift. But it could still be years and years away. But it does feel inevitable.

That would be great. The only time I'm ever adjusting the slider is the dimmest 5%. The top 50% of the slider really doesn't matter to me. It's annoying trying to hit exactly the right pixel on the low end though

Combined PTO (along with a salary job not needing coverage) does have its downsides, but it's nice just being able to use PTO whenever without needing any sort of proof. I can just wake up in the morning and decide I'm not working that day. No fuss, no doctors notes, no nothing. As long as I'm not blowing off important meetings or deadlines, no one cares

My parents, who aren't hardcore trumpers but did vote for him last time aren't voting and I consider that a massive win

The inability to install solar panels on my home is enshrined in my HOA and is extremely unlikely to be overturned by our members. We should be passing laws making these types of restrictions illegal

My local church puts out big signs in front telling you what to vote for. Regularly see cops attend that church. No one cares