Maybe it has something to do with also needing international support in order to defend itself from its neighbor… talk all the shit you want about the US’s stance on Israel, but shifting that to Taiwan is on par with claiming Ukraine deserved to get invaded.

Which I now realize is probably your next line. Anyway, oh well

Huh, I misremembered that last scene as a kiss, but I checked and I guess they do just hug. So at least that part isn’t so bad. I think the rest of my problems with the season are still legit though

I guess I’m the only one disappointed by season 2? I feel like they could have cut half of it and told the same story. Nothing even came close to the powerful messaging of the season 1 prison arc.

It wasn’t the worst or anything, but it was a pretty weak follow up to that great first season.

And that’s the punchline

The art is awful and the jokes are either literal nonsense or annoyingly simple. Same kinda stuff being said in this thread. Same reasons anyone dislikes a comic. Just doesn’t resonate. I can’t say why people decide some stupid shit works for them and other stupid shit doesn’t.

I’m not even sure this counts as drama. These people are addicted to wallowing in negativity. Gives me r/questionablecontent vibes, a subreddit about a webcomic where people purport to hate it but continue reading it every day just so they can get mad about it.

Like, I strongly dislike the Far Side, but despite how frequently it gets upvoted I don’t go into every comment section to talk about why. I just blocked the sub and scroll past it when it shows up in other subs. The behavior in these threads is pathetic.

This isn’t about trans people specifically, but the very existence of gendered bathrooms dates back to hilariously sexist 1800s ideas about how men and women should only be allowed to coexist at home. No surprise that religious fundamentalists continue to weaponize private spaces against anyone that doesn’t fit their norms.

They do often talk about “it needs to be new,” but for the most part the things they release don’t actually follow that philosophy. Artifact was trying to follow the likes of Hearthstone. CS2 is a glowup of CS:GO. DOTA2, League. Deadlock is the closest they’ve come to something genuinely innovative in at least a decade, but even that is still following on the heels of MOBA/FPS hybrids like OW and Paladins, just taking more elements from MOBAs.

And the “not caring about money” thing wasn’t true in 2008. They were probably getting to that point around 2012, as Steam began to turn into a money printer and their microtransaction games took off, but that wouldn’t have been until after HL3 had been cancelled at least once. At some point Valve talked about the difficulties in selling Portal 2 (I think it might have been in the dev commentary? Idk it’s been years) and one of the points they bring up was how even a huge success like that game wasn’t living up to their other titles. They tried to implement microtransactions with the co-op mode, but they learned lessons about how that model only worked in bigger multiplayer games. One of the big stories they tell in both the HL1 and HL2 documentaries were the troubles they ran into with funding, and I guarantee they were not looking to repeat those experiences by continuing work on a game that had far less potential for return on investment. Again, that might have changed by 2012, but by then the momentum was already gone.

I’m not sure I believe that Valve ran out of ideas for HL3. That’s clearly the image they want to project, and maybe even what they tell themselves, but judging from the ideas they did have for Episode 3 they showcased in that documentary, there was more than enough to justify releasing a game. Certainly there was as much or more new stuff than there was for either EP1 or 2. I think it’s much more likely they simply decided their other projects at the time–CS:GO, DOTA 2, even TF2–had way more moneymaking potential. And I mean, they were right! They made a ton of money off of lootboxes and cosmetics for their multiplayer titles. I don’t think Steam had totally taken over the market yet, so they were hedging their bets on multiplayer microtransactions.

I dunno. The whole “it needs to be new” philosophy they constantly espouse to hasn’t really been true at least as far back as Portal 2. Even Alyx wasn’t particularly revolutionary as far as VR titles go. Maybe doing that type of design was new to Valve, but the only standout features that distinguishes Alyx from other games are the graphics and the (genuinely very good) grabbity glove object pickup system. Pretty much everything else is several steps behind other VR shooter games in the name of Accessibility™, from movement to weapon selection to the painfully dumb AI.

They didn’t run out of ideas. The movement FPS genre is alive and well for a reason, even today: there’s lots to be done. They just lost interest in it themselves, and I believe the reason for that is primarily monetary.

At the point where we’re making lab-grown dinosaur meat, I suspect the cool factor is way more important than silly things like efficiency. T-Rex meat all the way babyyy

I did not but I’ll give you an upvote anyway

7 years??? To me that sounds like it never goes away, people just stop reporting it because they’re used to it

Uhh I guess it’s kinda like that, minus you knowing you farted. Imagine the dog barked and ran but you genuinely had no idea why that happened. As a joke you go “dang that was like I farted so bad even the dog couldn’t stand it!” But now everyone heard you say you farted, so any time a dog barks and runs away they call it “Rowbot’s fart.”

Dark matter may not literally be matter of any kind at all. All we know for sure is that objects with a certain amount of observable matter are, for some reason, behaving like they have much, much more. But also not with any consistency; some of them act like they have 30% more, others like they’re twice their size. We just call it dark matter because “dang it’s like there’s a bunch of matter we can’t see.” But we don’t really know what’s causing the discrepancy.

To be fair, it’s not like we’re totally clueless about it, but as of yet no single hypothesis has any concrete proof.

Like I said, watch her video. She goes into lots of detail and gives a much better explanation than I could ever hope to. But here I go anyway:

The gist of it is that “dark matter” isn’t really an attempt to explain anything. Like, theory of gravity, we have some good rules, things accelerate depending on mass and proximity to other things. Theory of dark matter? Not so much.

Dark matter is a problem in the sense that it’s an observable phenomenon we can’t really explain. When we observe really far away stars and galaxies, they interact in ways that imply far larger amount of matter than what we are actually observing. So where’s that matter? We don’t know! Dark matter! But unfortunately that nomenclature and the many ideas surrounding what does cause the dark matter phenomenon have deeply clouded the conversation.

Dark matter is not a theory of how things work. It’s a problem to be solved.

Watch her dark matter video. And the follow up. But for the love of God, dodge the comments. SO MANY people read the title of the video and then went to make comments calling her wrong, even though she spent like an hour specifically addressing the arguments they make.

Dark matter is not a theory. It’s a problem. Fuck!

Just like basically every mental attribute, ADHD is a spectrum. I’ve been diagnosed ADHD but don’t have it half as bad as many of the people here seem to, and yet I’ve also had a variety of bad reactions to every medication I’ve tried. Other people may have a few symptoms but not enough to bother getting a diagnosis, as it may not affect their daily lives at all.

But also I’m another person who has too many favorites to ever properly read through, so this is a definitely real, medically valid internet comment diagnosis that you undoubtedly have ADHD

Unfortunately I don’t know the physics, maybe something to do with how lights scatters through the windshield? Idk, all I can tell you is my repeated experience: turning the brights on definitely helps with seeing through oncoming traffic. But you are right, my older car is both smaller and lower, so I’m sure even the modern cars with lights aimed downward are more likely to shine directly at me

I mean I guess I’m stupid but I straight up can’t see if there’s oncoming traffic and my brights aren’t on. Doesn’t go for every oncoming car (if its lights are reasonable then I have no issues) but the vast majority of cars have newer, hilariously bright headlights that shine in a way where my normal lights simply don’t seem to cut it.

Meanwhile I’m out here driving a 20 year old car with correspondingly dim headlights and need to have the highbeams on just to be able to see anything when there’s oncoming traffic. My normal headlights are fine when there’s nothing coming the other way, but that’s not really how that’s supposed to work lol. Kinda defeats the purpose of ever turning the brights off! I swear any newer car’s normal lights are brighter than my brights

it literally happened to me but ok