For all the problems the game has, the major thing they get right is the environment.

Almost every area looks more than great, some are industrial, luxurious, barren, creepy, outright hostile, or cozy, but they are usually always gorgeous.

The environments are what pushed me to keep giving the game a chance after the initial shock of not having a cohesive overworld.

I've flipped flopped my consensus about the game a couple times, but my conclusion is this...

Starfield is not going to be what you expected from Skyrim in space, at first. It will seem weird and claustrophobic and broken.

But if you give yourself a bit to acclimate to the world they've built, there is a surprisingly engaging game underneath.

I believe they've left most planets barren on purpose, so they can easily shove DLC wherever they want for the next 10 years.

"New facehugger planet, 20 hours of exciting quests and valuable loot! - $29.99"

That's 100% going to happen.

If you have a good unit then most of the military experience is hanging out with your friends all the time.

Except for the 5am PT every morning, and at 7am when you've got to get your truck ready at the motor pool, or 8am when you've got special duty to set up the range, or 9am when there's a 2 hour briefing about keeping your hands to yourself and having a designated driver.

Lunch at 11am is usually alright, except the base you're at has the worst DFAC you've ever seen.

That range you helped set up? It's at 12am, and it's fun to blast away at targets thinking about how much weapon cleaning you're going to do tonight.

There's a lot of leftover ammo, but you only had to shoot 2 magazines, so your rifle isn't going to be that hard to clean. (Any vets know what's coming next?)

First Sergeant says we can't waste ammo, if we don't use the 10,000 rounds they give us, they will only give us 5 rounds next time.

So the next several hours is spent in the sun, loading more rounds to mindless blast in the general direction of targets on the range.

7pm rolls around, it's quitting time. Just kidding, night land nav, time to stumble around around in the dark with shitty NVGs and try to find all the points scattered throughout 2 miles, using nothing but a compass and a map.

Except nobody ever gets all the points, so everyone gets together at the end to share the points they found.

10pm, now it's quitting time, except wait, some moron has lost their night vision goggles, so instead of going back to the barracks, everyone is going to spend the night on the land nav course until it's found. In the morning it's found right next to one of the vehicle tires.

Those are the general events of a somewhat easy day in a combat unit. A day without overnight watch, hours of formations and drill ceremony, 30km ruck marches, endless briefings, flipping landscaping rocks because first sergeant doesn't like the side you flipped everything to last month, etc etc etc.

Personally I know several people who have been to prison, and many of them absolutely needed some institutionalized treatment.

Well, really they needed a strong community with support, mentors, and motivations to succeed, but in our broken society where community is all but dead, they needed prison.

Prison is a broken hellhole system, but with total reform, it could be a positive tool for society.

Maybe in a utopian society we could do away with prison, but there are a ton of changes we need to make before then.

Fortunately that doesn't work.

Even if Musk totally shut down Twitter, then opened an identical platform named X, the contracts Twitter held are still enforceable under the law.

There might be stipulations in the contracts where severance isn't payable if the company fails, but if I remember correctly, this severance is something mandated by state law, and not just a contractual perk.

So bottom line, Musk is liable unless his lawyers are able to worm their way into a settlement.

You can just click the checkbox for "Copy crack to install directory" to get the installer to do everything for you.

I'm not sure why that isn't the default.

Do you keep the game if you get the "Deluxe Upgrade" on GamePass? Or do you have to keep paying the subscription if you want to play?

Which GPU did you get?

I don't know why you'd want to rent the game if you've already got the cracked copy, but I would be surprised if the save files were any different between the two platforms.

Exactly what I was thinking.

That guy isn't making any big decisions behind the scenes. He's just being puppeteered until he dies.

Just tell your boss you want a union, or he'll have to replace his entire workforce, all 2 of you.

The Georgia GOP is going to get itself caught up in federal RICO charges at this rate.

I wonder how that would work.

I'm almost positive they've been developing an image recognition AI that will make slightly altering csam photos obsolete.

Here's hoping.

That's how it's supposed to work, but in many counties the bondsman doesn't actually front any cash to the court, and they don't get charged if the suspect runs. They operate as a sort of slush fund for the owners, the officials, and the cops.

So these companies are often just another way to siphon money from people accused of a crime.

Super shady stuff.

This guy was a sovereign citizen, so the worst of the worst kind of crazy.

Didn't see that mentioned elsewhere in the thread, and it's a big fucking detail to leave out.

If they used SMS those records are still around.

Or did they use something else?

Maybe 30 years ago.

But in the last 20 years there has been a lot of of funding towards prevention and researching a cure.

https://avac.org/project/resource-tracking/

An HIV vaccine has proven itself to be an extremely elusive target.

But with recent developments in biotechnology, it may not be much longer before we finally have get one.

And by they, you mean the right wind politicians in power.

The people who vote for them are constantly voting against their immediate interests.

If we had some sort of ranked choice, a lot of these one-issue voters might actually have a choice in their representation. Which would be good for all of us.

WinAeroTweaker will let you decide what junk you want to disable.

I mean, illegal online transactions are like the one place where crypto really shines.