I play occasionally and cheating has become more of an issue over the last 6-12 months. Some of my friends don’t even want to play anymore because of the cheating. I’m sure Epic is seeing some concerning metrics to justify implementing this because it would exclude many players which can’t meet the requirements.

Doesn’t it? I can’t find any industry stats. One thing I count on is companies to be self-interested. I don’t think they would use these anti-cheats unless they worked.

I wish to reduce CO2 emissions but the “Endangerment Finding” in 2009 was the most creative interpretation of the Clean Air Act ever devised. The 1970 Clean Air Act and later amendments did not expressly target greenhouse gases like CO2. Congress’ focus at that time was on local air quality problems (smog, particulates, nitrogen oxides, sulfur dioxide). In the 1990 amendments, Congress considered and ultimately chose not to adopt direct greenhouse gas regulatory provisions, indicating Congress did not intend to give EPA broad CO2 regulatory authority under the Act. The SC in Massachusetts v. EPA made a partisan ruling (5 to 4) to intentionally ignore the intent of the law, and instead rule strictly on its current meaning. Since the legislation was written very broadly, they ruled that CO2 could be covered.

We know the ruling was partisan because these same judges have ruled using originalist interpretations in the past. For example Stevens argued for congressional intent re INS v. Cardoza-Fonseca (1987).

If the American people wish to regulate CO2, it should pass a law with the intent to do so. Hijacking legislation which was never intended for this purpose was always going to be rescinded. Just like Trump’s executive orders are going to be easily rescinded.

I’m not sure which “pill” I’m about to take but I really think what you describe is less “sexism” and more “human nature.” I’ve seen attractive men and women get promoted on the basis of their attractiveness and sex appeal. It is especially prevalent in customer-facing roles. For some reason, people buy more from attractive people. They trust them more. They’re less likely to cancel contracts. They complain less. They agree more. Everyone just seems happier and more content. A slew of psychologists have a lot to say about this phenomenon so I don’t need to rehash it.

I think sexual appeal is inextricably linked to being liked, for good and bad. Some people are born on third base. Some people need to work much harder to be funny and charming.

We just tell ChatGPT to check our networked containers now.

how positively I’m perceived on a given day seems to not correlate with any work done

seems to mostly depend on how I look in meetings

I have discovered that being liked is more important than doing anything. This appears to be a near universal reality, and applies to work, relationships, family, religion, politics, home renovation, economics, finance - you name it. Always be nice to your colleagues. Smile a lot. Be interested in their hobbies. Say yes to social time. This is how you get promoted. If you want to make it to the C suite, you need to put in a little effort. Not too much though. You don’t want to become too important in your role to promote.

It would get stuck in endless debate over whether John Deere should be allowed to sell things because someone from Israel bought a tractor once.

I have a lot of Linux IOSs which are definitely not VR porn. I have 200TB total including parity disks, and 150TB usable. It’s a real pain in the ass to maintain so many disks, and the power bill isn’t fun either. I’d love to replace them with fewer disks.

When has the government failed to protect your or family members?

Just so I’m clear, you think I’m not allowed to care about others? I’m not even allowed to care about my own safety until my family has been attacked? Wild take. I’m glad society isn’t comprised of people like you. I care about others as well as my family. Most people aren’t murdered and raped and assaulted each year. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t care about murder and rape and assault.

Queer people don’t have to be ugly and fat. What an insane take. It’s not “queerphobic” to be unattracted to people. It is homophobic (and queerphobic) to tell people what they’re allowed to be attracted to.

I called them unattractive. You called that a flaw. Maybe it is. Like it or not, people prefer attractive characters in PvP hero shooters. See the outrageous success of Marvel Rivals which launched just three months after Concord. You seem to be taking this very personally. If you’re more attracted to fat, lumpy, and sexually ambiguous people, more power to you. You just don’t represent the vast majority of people who play these games.

When you consume high cholesterol foods, you’re likely going to have high blood LDL. That’s just physics.

No, that’s not how it works. Please read the paper I cited. That’s like saying we can breathe water because H2O has O in it. Human bodies are very complex. A strict diet can reduce LDL by around 8-15%. Nowhere near the dramatic decline you indicated. LDL is mostly determined by genetics, with 40-60% heritable. Other causes are related to genetic mutations, excess weight, and metabolic issues like diabetes. Less important factors include menopause, age, hypothyroidism, and certain medications. You likely had a comorbidity. From the paper:

Conclusions: In typical British diets replacing 60% of saturated fats by other fats and avoiding 60% of dietary cholesterol would reduce blood total cholesterol by about 0.8 mmol/l (that is, by 10-15%), with four fifths of this reduction being in low density lipoprotein cholesterol.

You think we have to be attracted to morbidly obese and ambiguously sexed people in order to be accepting? What kind chronically online take is that? People are allowed to find others unattractive. In your race to be the very virtuest of all, you’ve accidentally looped around to intolerance.

I struggle to think of worse examples in the AAA space. The colours weren’t just badly complemented, but intentionally violated colour theory. Their skills had nothing to do with their aesthetic or stories. They were just kind of thrown together without any care. Why was Baz, the bulky man, given ninja-like skills? None of the characters were attractive. One was morbidly obese. Almost all of them were gender non-conforming. And the biggest sin of all: none of them were cool. They were all lame as shit. You must know all of this if you’ve been following the story and criticism. It’s fine to disagree and in many instances there is room for subjectivity, but this was one of those rare examples where we can all come together to objectively declare these characters a train wreck.

Rail is very expensive to build, operate, and maintain. Rail is far more heavily subsidised in Europe than air travel and it’s still more expensive. It also doesn’t respond well to changes in demand. Tracks can’t be easily moved. Flights can easily be redirected. As technology and efficiency improves, flights become cheaper every year. Not rail, however, because most of the cost of operation and maintenance has nothing to do with energy efficiency. This gap will continue to widen. Further, rail has an inherent logistical limitation: all cars share limited lines. They are all limited by the slowest car. They are all stopped when an issue occurs with another car (or tracks). Planes can fly around damage to the network.

Flying receives far lower subsidies and infrastructure spending than rail. The EU subsidises air travel (including said avgas tax exemption) to the tune of around €30–40 billion annually depending on what you include and what you consider to be a “subsidy.” Using similar criteria, rail is subsidised to the tune of €40–75 billion per year. So rail gets a lot more investment despite it serving 16% fewer travel kilometers per year in the EU than air travel.

Thanks for the suggestion. Antihistamines help when symptoms are caused by histamine or histadine rich foods. Some people have overactive mast cell activity or produce too little DAO. You could also try DAO supplements. Which antihistamine works for you?

If the government won’t protect citizens they have the right to protect themselves.

I’m not American and I don’t care how much you like or dislike the NRA. Your comment sounds like authoritarian bootlicking.

Siri is such a mess I see no other way than buying something like Anthropic or partnering with a competent LLM. If this were to work it would require using Gemini for voice recognition and not just passthrough like they’re currently doing with ChatGPT. The experience is awful.

Good. An armed society is a polite society. Guns are the great equaliser. Larger and stronger people aren’t free to assault smaller and weaker people as they wish. There are societies like Singapore and China where crime is punished so severely that people don’t need personal protection. Sadly, today, that’s not how most of the West is run.