Not that I’m actually trying to defend MS/Teams (seriously, fuck ‘em both); but this is more due to IT Admin settings.
We have similar in our company, that’s in place because we handle PIR data regularly and it’s meant to be a speed bump rather than full roadblock.
I’ve been mulling over this the past few years, having finally kicked the WoW habit in the second year of Shadowlands (approaching ~3 years now)…
…but how often are quests/missions/objectives etc. just a combination of go to x, collect x of y, kill x of y? At a certain point, all of these become generic - right?
VPN to a country with a lower cost, and sign up there. It used to be Turkey and India, where you could get a Family Plan for like $2/mo - but they’ve cracked down a bit on it.
We use YT for so much in our ‘household’ that it made sense to pool together and get Premium, and honestly it feels good having ~5 people who consume a tonne of content ad-free for nearly no cost while still supporting our preferred content creators.
You need to seperate out the political machine from the populace.
The DNC did make a right-ward play to try and peel centrist/moderate voters who identify as Republicans but didn’t necessarily want to vote for Trump. They did this on the (now we know false) assumption that their base would turn out automagically.
But again, Trump won with fewer votes this time around than he lost in 2020 to Biden with. He didn’t gain standing, the only reason he was victorious was because those left of centre failed to show up to the polls. Voter apathy doesn’t denote a right-wing shift; it denotes a shit political platform.
Voters are still voting rather progressively on state-wide ballot measures, the people haven’t gotten more conservative - despite what the (elite-owned) media narrative would have you believe. Every datapoint and infographic regarding voter demographics is based on %s of voters, rather than absolute demographics.
As in to the left of the (imaginary) political centre; not self-identifying Leftists. This cohort includes centrists, moderates, liberals and leftists amongst others.
I’m not familiar with the California referendum in question, but Florida saw over 57% vote in favour of extending abortion rights.
The only reason it lost was because it required at least 60% to pass; instead Florida now gets to experience the tyranny of minority rule.
I used 2020 as a comparison for a few reasons;
Rather than looking at percentages, the individual counts are more important as they tell the underlying story.
The DNC’s GOTV campaign absolutely failed to motivate their base and undecided voters. Perhaps that was somewhat intentional, as a lot of the former GOP aligned ‘never-Trump’ campaign financiers have shifted to the Dems and have used their new-found influence to nudge the party’s platform rightward. The Cheney endorsements certainly didn’t do them any favours!
But looking at how even deep-red states have voted in support of abortion rights, shows that the general US populace is generally slowly drifting leftward - despite what the corporate-owned media narrative would have you believe.
Biden got ~81m votes in 2020, Harris only got ~67m. >14m fewer people voted for her.
Trump also dropped by ~2m, only getting ~72m this time around vs. ~74m in 2020.
Trump didn’t win because of a giant right-wing national shift, he won because of voter apathy on the left.
Understatement of the decade, IMO!
I’ve barely touched my Steam games library as it is, have just dived headfirst into emulating my retro game collection (PS1, 2, 3 & Portable); along with SNES predominantly - because fuck Nintendo.
It’s a week in Japan in total, then a couple more weeks travelling Asia. Trying to cram in as many distractions as possible
Non-American, though (rightfully) heavily invested in this election.
Since I’m an otherwise powerless observer, we took our family to Tokyo Disneyland to help and distract us until the results are in.
Really feels like a surreal Last Supper moment, NGL.
It’s not xenophobia, it’s a matter of national security for every single western nation. Without Intel, x86 processor manufacturing would be limited to TSMC in Taiwan, and would only serve to further incentivise Chinese aggression over the island.
So yes, paranoia - but sometimes that can be a good thing.
Ever since watching the latest season of Clarkson’s Farm, I can’t help but hear him say ‘space penises’ any time I read the word mishrooms…
He was discussing options where people oppose both ads and subscriptions as methods of payment for consumed media.
IMO YouTube Premium is the only subscription that I will probably never cancel as not only does it pay more to content creators than ad revenue does (per individual viewing), it directly financially supports the hundred-odd creators I enjoy (large and small).
If the cost is too high for you to justify, you can band together with friends to split the costs of a Family Plan and/or do as I do and VPN back to my home country where the cost is significantly less than it is where I live now!
…or it’s available on the service you subscribe to, but not in your region.
I just thought it was a speech impediment… 🤷🏻♂️
I doing think it was an one thing, but more-so a build-up over time - a death of a thousand cuts, if you will:
It was a cultural moment generally, just think back to all of those celebrity commercials (“I’m Mr. T and I’m a Night Elf Mohawk”). All cultural moments pass eventually.
The third expansion (Cataclysm) was quite weak to begin with; coupled with a lack of content in the tail-end of the second (Wrath of the Lich King), which itself was incredible - narratively wrapped up the story that began all the way back in Warcraft 3.
So a lot of people chose that time to bow out of the game, as it required a fair bit of time dedication and seemed like an appropriate time to do so - given the narrative pay-off.
Lastly, the introduction of a number of game tools to automate the group composition process meant that the impact of player reputation on servers was severely diminished. Before then, there players who were toxic (stealing items, intentionally killing the group, failing quests) were infamous on a server.
Once this tool was further opened up to allow for groups to form across multiple servers - the sense of community was shattered as you would have no way to know if the person from another server was good/bad etc. it stopped being about bringing in the individual player, and just getting a body in to fill a role.
As someone who was lucky enough to get to experience those first ~6 years; it truly was lightning in a bottle.
20 years on, I am still friends with a number of those I met in WOW - and an in contact with a few more beyond that!
Unfortunately, it does feel like that sense of community those early years fostered are long gone, save perhaps a blip when Classic first launched.
Who knows when the next game will come along, which will be able to foster such relationships.
Obama at least managed to deliver the Affordable Care Act; which despite not being Medicare Part E (Medicare for All), was a significant improvement over what existed before.
What the US needs is a proper progressive firebrand from the Dems; someone from the Bernie school - or hell, just pick from any one of the other Western democracies.