Fizzzzle

This will never actually be built, but if it did it would be interesting how they would plan on keeping it supplied. I'm not sure how it would ever be able to cross open ocean and would basically need its own fleet of smaller fright vessels constantly ferrying supplies, water, and gas back and forth. That's if most countries would ever let in anywhere near their territorial waters (spoiler, they wouldn't). Most countries would (probably rightfully) assume that massive amounts of drugs are coming on/off the ship all the time. Basically it's a logistical nightmare if you think about it for longer than 5 seconds. Most likely, in the extremely unlikely event it ever does get built, it will end up basically stuck in one spot in the territorial waters of whatever country will tolerate its presence while it destroys the local ecosystem into oblivion.

Yes I did. It's easily my favorite jrpg of the last 5 years. Honestly all of the Ys games are great, at least the ones I've played (I've never played Oath in Felghana or Origin, but I've seen good things about both of them). Falcom is honestly the best jrpg developer these days.

I actually did that with my current potato laptop. I was kind of on autopilot, realized I did it as soon as I clicked it and was like FUCK! ... they got me.

I ended up spending, uh... Rather more than 2k ... Christmas present for myself. ... For the next 5 years. Hopefully it's worth it. I travel/move too much to deal with a desktop (I've moved three times in like the last 18 months), I haven't been able to play games really at all much of the last 2 years, and I want my hobby back. Plus I can start doing photo/video editing again now that I won't be using a potato. First things first will probably be to play the Sims 4 for a little while, then I have 2 years worth of backlog to catch up on! I still haven't played Ys IX (thank you @Commissar SFLUFAN), red dead redemption II, Assassin's Creed Valhalla, God of War, horizon zero dawn, disco Elysium, and a whole bunch of other shit. I'm excited.

Game 7 of the Blazers/Lakers WCF in 2000. I remember that day well. After going down 3-1, the Blazers won games 5 and 6 going into the Staples Center for game 7. The Pacers had already won their series in the ECF. It was agreed by pretty much everyone that whoever won between the Blazers and Lakers would fucking smoke the Pacers, so this game was essentially for the championship (spoiler: The Pacers actually did end up winning 2 games against the Lakers) A few weeks prior, my mom had won tickets to this new fangled artsy-fartsy show called "Cirque du'Soleil," which was setting up in Portland for the first time. This was far before we knew there would be a game 7 of the WCF between the Blazers and Lakers. I pleaded with my mom to give up the tickets and let us stay home and watch the game. She said "no." My brother begged her, she said "no." My dad got down on his hands and knees, "PLEASE, WOMAN, CAN WE WATCH THE FUCKING GAME!" ... she said "no. We are going to Cirque du'Soleil." It probably didn't help that my dad was cheating on her at the time and she knew about it, so she took a sick pleasure in depriving him of the game. Tip off was right before the show started. We were all sitting there in this fucking tent underneath a bridge in downtown Portland, seething. 30 minutes go by and I can't help but think "I wonder how the Blazers are doing? Is Scottie Pippen putting Kobe and his stupid afro in place? Is Rasheed Wallace abusing the fact that no one can guard him when Arvydas Sabonis is on the floor to neutralize Shaq? Is Brian Grant a secret weapon to fuck shit up because the Lakers have no depth?" ... I had no answers to these questions. Circumstances would change on the fate of a bladder. My older brother, ever the wee-bladdered sissy of a man, kept having to get up to pee. This was annoying, as by this point I had resigned myself to my fate and actually was getting interested in the acrobatic talents of exploited Romanian teenagers. After about the 4th time he got up to pee, he came back and whispered some magic words into my ear... "a guy in the men's bathroom has a radio." Immediately, I got up to pee. I stormed into that bathroom, and lo and behold, there's this sad looking soon-to-be divorcee in a newsboy cap leaning against one of the sinks with a radio tuned to the game. There are at least 6 or 7 other dudes in there, just casually standing around, not looking at each other, deeply concentrating. I realized I couldn't stay in the bathroom and listen to the game for long, so I went back down to my seat, by which point my brother had told my dad of the news. My dad immediately got up and went. We proceeded to play a game of whack-a-mole for the next 45 minutes, each relaying to each other the news as we came back to our seats. After the first half was over, it was a close game, but the Blazers were ahead. Then the third quarter started and BOOM! The Blazers went on like a 22-3 run (this was back when they didn't score so many points). They were fucking unstoppable. Rasheed Wallace was going off, Kobe was bricking left and right, Shaq was being bottled up, the game looked like it was in the bag. Into the 4th quarter, with only about 10 minutes left in the game, the Blazers were up by 20 points. I could fucking taste the championship. I went back to my seat, confident in my knowledge that Portland was going to see its first NBA championship in my lifetime. I zoned out and watched some dudes crawl over each other or whatever, fully content. It wasn't until we got back to the car, immediately tuned on the AM sports radio station to hear the jubilant cries of the sportscasters that we heard... the Blazers fucking LOST?!? ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?!? The Blazers got outscored something like 29-6 in the last 9 minutes. A lot of people from Portland will blame the refs for it, but I don't. People who blame refs for losses are fucking idiots 99.9999% of the time, and this is one of those times. They have no fucking clue what they're talking about. In reality, a few of the guys probably got complacent, Scottie Pippen got exhausted, and in the footage that I watched afterward, Rasheed Wallace looked like a fucking deer in headlights in the final minutes. It was a full on collapse of epic proportions. So anyway, I never went to cirque du'soleil again.

Speaking as someone who has slept on all manner of things over the last year, I'll take an air mattress over a futon or most couches

NBA players make what they make through collective bargaining. The players get 50% (or 52% or whatever it is now) of the league's estimated revenue, which then becomes the salary cap. The NBA made $8.8 billion in the last pre-COVID season. The WNBA made $50 million. That's why WNBA players play overseas during the offseason.

I've been using one for the last 6 weeks or so. It's honestly not bad. Would rather have a regular bed, but it's much, much better than the floor or a couch.

I'm just saying, Indonesia doesn't really have the ability to enforce laws like this. That's not to say it "doesnt matter," just that like 99% of people in Indonesia are going to ignore the law and in the overwhelming amount of cases, no one is going to do anything about it. There's a pretty massive difference between the way laws work in Indonesia vs. the US.

Keep in mind that Indonesia is not an authoritarian state by any means. The logistics alone of trying to enforce laws like this in a massive archipelago that stretches over a larger area than the continental US make it kind of impossible. That doesn't mean this doesn't suck, I'm just saying people kind of ignore the law most of the time there, anyway. Hell, they're a Muslim country that has a national beer which you can buy damn near anywhere. You can also get arak pretty much anywhere if you know where to look and that's technically illegal.

I personally really liked it. The combat system felt consistently rewarding and the missions (for the most part) didn't feel repetitive. I would definitely give it a go.

When punishment for crimes is a fine, you're just making it illegal for people who can't afford it. For everyone else, it's the cost of doing business. If a billionaire parks in a handicap spot every day and all he ever gets is a $100 ticket, that means nothing to them, they're just going to keep doing it. To them, it's like upgrading to first class.

That would just make chuds like him more. It's the same people who loved Sherrif Joe for being "tough on criminals," when in actuality Sheriff Joe was only in charge of jails, not prisons. The overwhelming majority of people in jails either haven't been convicted of a crime yet or are serving sentences so minor that it's not worth sending them to prison. But as long as the people getting incarcerated/starved/tortured are some kind of OTHER group, it's out of sight and out of mind.

I still mostly look the same as when I was 20-ish (I'm 32). Maybe you can see a hint of crows feet and my face looks more round than it used to, but that's about it. I'm also starting to go bald, but you can't see that from the front. I haven't got any greys yet, but both my dad and my grandpa didn't really start greys until they were in their 50's/60's

My backlog is always so high that I rarely ever buy games at launch anymore. I'll wait until 6-7 months later when it goes on sale on Steam for 50% off when all the bugs are fixed

Removing bloat ware isn't a huge deal, honestly. Just gotta get high, throw on a true crime podcast and get to work. Make a half day out of it.

The leader of the orcs

That's good. Like I said, I'm probably almost never going to use it when not at a desk. I just also haven't lived in one place for longer than like 4 months in the last 2 years. I need a portable desktop, not a... Portable laptop... If that makes sense.

Do those cooler pad things I've seen people use actually work?

The weight/battery life stuff doesn't really bother me, as I would almost never use it while not at a desk/couch. I have a Chromebook I use for other situations, as well as another really shitty laptop. I'm basically not so much looking for a totally portable experience so much as something that isn't a bitch to take with me every once in a while. A semi-nomadic desktop PC, if you will.

I thought about it, but I also need a work laptop. I think I should be able to go pretty high end. I do want it to last me a while. I didn't know that AMD processors Eh, like $2k probably. We'll see.

I think I'm going to get one. I tend to move around a lot these days. I haven't even used my desktop in over a year because most of the time I simply don't have it available. It seems like every single gaming laptop has a bunch of people saying it sucks. Surely, they can't all be bad? I've seen most people complain that Alienware laptops have bad battery life, but like... When the fuck are you using that thing on a battery, honestly. A bunch also come with bloat ware, but that's no surprise. You just have to spend a day cleaning all that shit out, it's not a huge deal. A bunch of laptops I've noticed are also all still 1080p

I honestly don't even know how that's possible. Like, mechanically speaking.

It's good to know for sure that I definitely do NOT want my leg to get run over by a truck.