Care to elaborate?

Meta question: this topic is about the act of reading, and not about any specific books. Is there a meta "reading" community where this topic would be better suited so as not to disrupt the signal-to-nouse ratio here? Or are we still small enough to keep everything lumped together.

Not meta, but related to the article: started reading a new (to me) sci fi series while on the beach last weekend (Canada Day long weekend). Primaterre. About a third into the first boon. Great escapism, mediocre writing. Will finish the first book and then read some reviews and see if the series is worth investing my time in. But, yeah, it feels good to zone out 😄

Right.

A lobbyist with access to federal politicians in Canada with actual portfolios is like a quarter million per year as a minimum. Maybe a million if you want to fund a "think tank" and publish "studies" and do press releases trying to get the news to bite on some of them, so you can use the news as your excuse to bring issues up.

If you're doing it yourself, then $5k might get you a plate at a gala where you hope to run into the appropriate politician for a minute. Would you pay $5k to hope to have a one minute conversation where 45 seconds of it is pleasantries and you might get one sentence in? And you have to use that sentence to explain who you represent... And someone is tugging their elbow leading to another table and they're gone. Well, hopefully the people at your table were interesting conversation.

Storytime: I am small business owner. We pay a few thousand dollars a year to throw industry drinking events primarily for networking. Personal invites. Sometimes I can get the provinical Minister of Mines to attend with his handlers, but only if I promise no lobbying. I might get about five minutes of their time (as host) and try to honour my commitment to no lobbying at the event (their handlers will remove them if they feel it is a lobbying event). My payoff is a direct communication line, which I try not to abuse. Then the government changes (elections or cabinet shuffle) and I have to do it again. I've failed to get a direct line on the current minister for almost two years. But this is small potatoes Canadian provincial politics. I'd have to spend 10x that amount to attempt get face time with the federal minister.

This song for me into Muse.

Muse going batshit conspiracy crazy got me out of Muse.

$6k is nothing. Bank it in case of a catastrophic server failure or something.

Patriotism is often equally bad.

Humanism ftw.

Reminds me of learning in the 90s. Giant "Learn C++" book, me adding 75 sticky notes around the edges...

It probably wasn't a good book, but it's the one the local bookstore had so...

Text editor is EDIT.COM ;)

I go to the Petro Canada on St. Matthews semi regularly. Also native owners. Other than noticeable numbers of native employees (and being politely asked for my treaty card when I pay even though I'm white as a sheet), it just feels like a gas bar. Like one that you'd go to on highway 6 somewhere maybe.

Seems like a bunch of minor issues, but nothing super stupid so far.

The bus that is going to RRC is now number D16. On the sign it looks like "dig RRC" which is funny.

David Lynch, ironically, would conceive a character like this...

Got rained out playing Slopitch this evening. Too bad for the game, but good for beer. Happy Canada Day ya hosers. 🇨🇦

Sorry, I'm not American. Looking at it from the outside. There are a lot of things America can do better.

But from a purely math perspective, it's a good metric to explain why Japan has what it has.

Or healthcare. Or whatever else. Yes.

But you've already lost the war against the capital class and are left dreaming.

Japan is smaller than California, with several times the population density.

Reframe your thoughts as: taxpayers per mile of track. Then begin to understand.

I think, once all three pages are full, new effects randomly replace existing effects. This is how it used to work before they added the extra slots.

Assuming 18 effect slots, and a true RNG, this means they'll have a 1/18 chance of any feature being removed for each new effect.

Without doing the math, I'd wager this value is in the hundreds features added before all negative features are removed. But you could get very lucky and have five removed quickly.

Settlement terminals now show the name and class of their associated building when viewed through the Analysis Visor.

QoL fix. Very useful.

The first sentence doing a lot of lifting here. Actually trapped?

I'm bearded! Hurray for self-esteem reinforcemeny memes! ;)

Wish you luck 🤞

"Decaf!?", he screamed incredulously as he plunged the broken carafe into the barkeepers neck.