Genuinely curious:

Is the author saying that ACO and VBC were decent ideas that got UHG’s fingers grafted into the legal structure, or are they just saying that ACO and VBC are bad in general?

And I knew that we had some awful structures within our healthcare system, but I LOATHE UHG and didn’t realize that they OWN our medical system. Disgusting.

So Prey team made Redfall and Dishonored team is making the new Blade game? Good to know!

Been playing Dishonored for the first time and really enjoying it. I’m only at the bridge and trying to play a low/no kill game. I’m not succeeding just yet, but it’s been really enjoyable and they do stealth really well. I’m baffled that they mismanaged to get the team that made this and Prey to push out Redfall? Man.

Just picked up FFVII after the second or third hiatus or my third or fourth attempt to play it. FINALLY made it to the Nibelheim story and past Midgard. And that somehow still manages to work on me as a first time player.

Just beat Banner Saga 1 and have never felt so much like a failure after “beating” a game. That game is trying to unseat This War of Mine for decisions regretted/minute.

I’m wanting to start up my Nintendo series playthroughs again by either starting Mario Galaxy 2 or trying to remember what on earth was happening in Majora’s Mask (3DS) something about the water temple maybe?

I beat Hyper Light Drifter for the first time. And I think I spent some time on the new Mario kart levels, though that might have been last week.

HLP is a fascinating game with a novel approach to gameplay and world building. A few controls issues annoyed me, but they were growing pains and not fully learning the system. I love games that use that particular art style. I think I’m doing Mario Galaxy next.

I’m trying to figure out my second Voucher game to get.

My top choices are: Arceus - I enjoy pokemon, but it sounds like a lot of “research” busy work. Pikmin 4 - I haven’t clicked with Pikmin demos previously, but the idea has always seemed pretty interesting if I’d let it go farther. Mario Wonder - feels shorter, and more peripheral to my interest, but I’ve heard great things. Xenoblade 3 - I’ve only played XBX before and not all the way through. RPGs aren’t completely my thing, but I’ve heard great things.

None of them are THE game I’m after with pros and cons to each. The decision paralysis is rough and I don’t see anything worth waiting for before May.

TL;DR:

Stores that are closing in New York, Seattle, Portland, and San Francisco were all able to analyzed for a variety of theft crimes as compared to nearby stores in their cities. In each case, stores that are closing are less than or similar to nearby stores in reported rates of these crimes. Other locations mentioned by Target were not able to be analyzed, either due to insufficient data or no comparable stores in those cities.

In addition, “shrink” rates for Target locations continues a regular oscillation of between 1.2% and 1.6% of gross sales, often correlating with movement in retail sales overall. Of factors that contribute to shrink, retail theft is only one. Others factors include employee theft, processing, and administrative mistakes.

Popular Info points to these data and announced plans for smaller stores being built near to many of the closures as a possible indicator of other factors leading to these closures than theft. The announcement and blame came out the same day as an industry group’s report on the impacts of retail theft on sales.

That game should be mailed directly to dictators and war mongers everywhere.

“THIS. THIS is what you want for your people? For ANY people? “

For me, my “misery is the point” game was This War of Mine. I got it just before Ukraine, but still couldn’t stomach it. My first character had a kid that was constantly crying and whimpering and I just couldn’t do it. I was bad at it—if you can be good. I couldn’t help others in the ways that I wanted to. I couldn’t stop the whimpering. Then I went out as someone else and came back and the dad and kid left. And I had to stop there for a bit.

I set it down to come back later, then Ukraine happened. Where it was hard to stomach while I knew this was hypothetical and the Euro-setting was pretty abstracted from the current reality there—though still very present elsewhere—knowing that people on the ground were looking and sounding similar to what was happening in game and seeing that in news daily just cut off any desire I had to play. It’s powerful and DEEPLY empathetic, but that spiral of misery and failure was the point and it made it in spades.

Sadly, I have nothing valuable to add to this conversation.

Except that I misread LLM as LMG and thought this was another post about them before I got really confused. Then I realized it might not entirely be off, before checking again and realizing that it definitely is.

That man put out fantastic videos. I’d love to see him continue to do so.

This is one of the finest.

To your edit, OP said ONLY the melons, no other fruit.

This is a gross overreach. Just stop.

I feel like the sci-fi trope of an ai that chews through everything in its way to achieve a single goal with no consideration for complexity or other factors isn’t sci-fi, but it also isn’t the ai that’s doing it. There are groups like the ESRB who simply want to reduce their job to a single goal with no consideration for complexity or other factors likely these children’s privacy (which should be one of ESRB’s goals, arguably).

Just like in those stories, these groups are chewing through other aspects of life that are absolutely significant in order to optimize a single metric to the exclusion of all else.

It’s good because we can now refer to tweets as exes and, though some of us will linger on, wishing things were the way they used to be, many of us will move on and remember what a deeply abusive relationship we left.

It’s good because it draws attention to the fact that the owning company is now called the cyberpunk “x-corp” and maybe anyone at all will actually leave because they recognize that companies idolizing cyberpunk corpos are things to run and hide from.