TwinIon

Yeah, the link in the article that shows emissions were down 21% makes it clear that the pandemic is the reason for much of the change. Here's a pretty useful graph: Power was on it's way down thanks to the decline of coal, which doesn't seem to have been sped up by the pandemic. The other major sources all deviated sharply from what we would have expected because of the pandemic. Transportation, industry, and buildings are all either flat or on a slight upward slope from 2009, but took a nosedive thanks to COVID. The conclusion to that article clearly states: "If COVID-19 and the resulting recession hadn’t happened, we estimate that US emissions would have declined by only around 3% this year." (as opposed to the 10.3% drop we got.) Basically, the only good thing we've done is get rid of coal and partially replace it with renewables (and natural gas, which is a much lesser gain). Let's not pat ourselves on the back too much.

The cynic in me thinks that the GOP passed this just to give themselves cover on any voting rights bill. They can point to this and say "see, we care about black people!" That doesn't mean it shouldn't be a nationally recognized holiday, but it is hard to appreciate token gestures like this when there is such consequential legislation pending.

I understand the allure of a time travel story, but they always make me nervous because they're so easy to screw up. I'm too lazy to look it up, but I'm pretty sure that we've seen multiple "time cops" in Star Trek by now, including a future version of the Federation. I wonder who will show up this time.

I'll happily play Dread, but I have to admit it's not the Metroid game I was hoping for.

It's silly and I really don't need one, but I want an Xbox mini fridge.

Playing in performance RT mode and it's often difficult to even notice RT reflections because of how dense this game is. It really does look amazing. I wonder how well Rift Apart stacks up to most kids TV shows these days.

I'm glad it's coming out, but it's hard to get too hyped for a game we know so little about.

I haven't gotten into a Halo mulitplayer for a long time but I'm definitely going to give Infinite a go. As someone who doesn't care about customization options, the battle pass probably isn't for me, but I think they're making the right moves. Knowing exactly what you need to do to get a thing without having any kind of loot box is really great. It certainly seems like the kind of game I could get into for a bit and return to whenever I feel like it or whenever a friend wants to pick it up. Infinite continues not to look technically very impressive, but it does look like a lot of fun.

Mostly sounds good to me. The experience that I enjoy in Battlefield is that I launch into a map and make a significant contribution to the team without being someone that'll win many 1-on-1 firefights. Capturing checkpoints, healing squad-mates, destroying or piloting vehicles, whatever. It sounds like that will be present, so I'll probably give it a go.

I just want release dates for Witcher and Cowboy Bebop.

I would guess this may have been spurred by this survey that started making the rounds indicating that many US adults don't have people they can trust for help in their personal lives. As for myself, I'm quite lucky in the friends I have. My closest group of friends are people I've known since elementary school, a few from high school, and a couple from college. I'm rather introverted, and I've never been good at making friends, but those friends I do make seem to stick around. My wife is pretty much the same way. I've long wondered what factors most determine keeping friends for the long term, and how much of it is luck. My brothers, both good guys, both much more outgoing than I was, especially in middle school and high school, but neither has ended up with the same kind of close friend groups I have. Did I just happen upon the right people at the right times, or have I been doing something all these years to keep my friends around?

Sure seems like Performance RT is easily the way to go. Hopefully Amazon gets my copy here sooner than later.

Lol. His defense was basically "I didn't do it on purpose but I should have," which is a pretty weasely admission. If you really think the thing you did on video was the right thing to do, it's pretty spineless to still not admit you did it.

So is Forbidden West. I know it's not the same devs, but we did recently get a PS5 Souls game that looked pretty good.

Graphically, not impressive. Lots of style, but technically it feels very PS4 rather than PS5.

The Anacrusis (sp?) looks really terrible in every possible way. Graphically it looked like an unfinished mobile game, and the gunplay looked dull and boring.

Two Point Hospital was another sim game that was fun enough that I'm interested in Campus.

MS sure seems to have a significant lead in cloud gaming. It feels like they're the only one with a clear vision for the business and the tech. The best experiences will continue to rely on local hardware, but who knows how long that will last.

It wasn't ground breaking by any means, but I enjoyed the first Jurassic Park Evolution well enough that I'll probably pick up the sequel.

Excuse me. I'm a straight white American man, age 18-35, with disposable income. I'm pretty sure all media is supposed to be aimed at me and only me and I take any suggestion otherwise to be an attack on me personally.

So this cop was pulling someone over for speeding on the freeway, the driver slowed down, moved to the far right lane, and put on their hazards, looking for a safe place to pull over given the very narrow shoulder. Half a mile before an exit, after only 2 full minutes the cop decides they're fleeing the scene and used a PIT maneuver, flipping the small SUV. Pregnant driver is now suing the Arkansas State Police. In 2020 AK State Police used PIT maneuvers 144 times last year, double the year before, resulting in at least 3 deaths. The driver's actions followed the exact textbook procedures.

While not directly related to the trial, you can add one more upset app creator to the pile. Fanhouse, which is described as something between Only Fans and Patreon, is mad that Apple want's its full 30% for every dollar that goes through the app. This does seem like a place where Apple's distinction between physical and digital goods is particularly difficult. It also seems odd that Patreon can use third party payment solutions, but Fanhouse, which is pretty much the same model, can't. Fanhouse even suggested that Apple could take a 30% cut of Fanhouse's revenue, which is 10% of a subscription, though it's not hard to imagine why Apple wouldn't want to create that kind of precedent. They also seem to have an Android app that doesn't look like it has in-app-purchases, but it only has 5K downloads to it's not clear if Google decided to give them a pass or if they're just small enough to be under the radar for now. The Fanhouse folks make a lot of "you're taking food out of our mouths" arguments, which I'm not really inclined to agree with, but I do think more examples of Apple being inconsistent with their rules and potentially harmful to innovation is bad for their future prospects in the Epic case and other inevitable anti-trust action.

I do really wish they'd given a real number for what the "true tax rate" of the average American is, even if it was a rough estimate. At some point they mention that wage earners in their 40s typically saw their net worth expand by $65,000 a year, and slightly earlier they said the median household earned $70,000 a year, but the methodology page makes it clear the former is a subset of the latter, so the numbers can't be directly compared. In the graphic they used they showed that "typical wealth growth" was less than typical taxes, and that the typical income tax was 14%, but they either messed up or decided that ascetics were more important than data in their visualization, because the "typical taxes" box is not to scale with the income. I feel like it hurts their argument when they keep comparing apples and oranges, especially since comparing apples to apples almost certainly wouldn't change their argument, and even bolster it in some demographics. For most Americans wealth growth follows increased income, but because most of their wealth comes from wages, they pay an increasingly higher "true tax rate," obviously not the case with the billionaires they profile. I guess it would be much harder to figure out those numbers, or even how to calculate it across demographics (which is why they took such a small slice for many of their "typical" numbers), but it would be easier and more honest if you could say the median "true tax rate" of Americans is 12% or whatever.

lol