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Cake day: July 3rd, 2023

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  • Those amounts aren’t USD yeah, probably habit when writing down money. The 170k and 360k figures are the WoW virtual currency aka “gold”.

    There is a floor to WoW token’s gold value from what I recall (it’s been years since I interacted with Blizzard and WoW) but no ceiling.

    Dunno how hard it curbed bots/unsanctioned gold sellers/fascist scum grassroots campaigns (no, really, look into Stephen Bannon and WoW gold it’s so fucking stupid) but!

    Blizzard absolutely realized and then moved to take all the money that was being left on the table from 3rd party virtual currency sales, and they apply every measure and analytical tool to maximize that profit because of course.

    This mount’s release is literally them inflating the price of the virtual currency ahead of real life earnings calls, because it absolutely will sell and give them the revenue infusion that the WoW token’s rise in value is meant to provide for as long as they want until it’s time to pump the numbers again with another mount/high sought store item.

    A very similar variant in form and function to this mount was once available in-game and trade able with a rarity tuned that it ended up being sold for the WoW Token equivalent of ~$500 at the prices at the time, as there was no store version or similar option elsewhere.

    It’s no accident that when the price of the WoW Token is at its lowest, here comes a slightly updated and dolled up version of that same highly sought mount version.

    WoW is where real economics, car ownership culture, hoarding, and dopamine treadmills collide and Blizzard doesn’t just know this but have it charted on 5 year plans.



  • Not all.

    Carriers tend to have internal hangar spaces, repair/loadout spaces, machining capability, assisted takeoff/landing systems on the flight deck, etc.

    To “carry” the aircraft and expect them to perform their roles, the carrier has to be a mobile light airfield and not just a deck to land and take off from.

    Edit: Not to say they can’t sail or don’t with any of them on the flight deck of course, but that’s maintaining a certain level of readiness that has some posturing inherent. I guess that’s true for all military readiness doctrines.


  • While your point that sometimes people just have AI image associated traits is very salient, I worry you might not be considering the lengths these things will be used and why online discourse (in my worried opinion) is utterly fucked: The past ain’t safe either.

    For now we still have archive.org but without a third party/external source validating that old content…you can’t be sure it’s actually old content.

    It’s trivial to get LLMs to get image gen prompts done to “spice up those old news posts” at best (without remembering to tag the article edited/updated or bypassing that flag entirely)…and utterly fuck the very foundation of shared and accepted past reality not just presently but to anyone using the internet itself to look through the lens of the past at worst.


  • For someone who grouses about humanity, you’re scorning a ton of them. The only thing I’m angry is I wasted my time trying to get through. Others have explained causality and how absurd it is to expect your mind read. Thank you for wasting the kindness of my explanation of a turn of phrase for someone who amidst their boundaries stated they’re neurodivergent. I love doing that, and that is extreme sarcasm. May you be forever misunderstood.



  • Software has been leveraged to do mass arbitrations against companies that insist on enforcing it, somewhat leveling the playing field in the power imbalance, at no less a cost than courts ultimately for the corps. Tricky enough they’ve found it hard to make language against them too.

    So in a sense, it is de-enshitification but it is more likely borne from Steam throwing in the towel against a losing proposition (preventing costly mass-arbitration) than doing so because they want every user to have the maximum legal recourse.

    A W is a W though, imo.





  • I think I can relate, somewhat. It’s not easy, constantly being rational in the face of evil depravity. A just mind seeking a clean pattern of cause and effect can’t be blamed when it starts asking “where is the sword of the innocent”, and I personally get how that morphs to “Ok, will somebody give me the sword?”.

    I’m there myself today, on other news. Beware the thoughts, however. There’s a difference between wanting to wield a sword to protect and one to punish; one is swift and necessary, the other opens the window to festering and becoming the abyss.

    I wouldn’t weep at a swift and ignominious end now, and I certainly would personally swing down that figurative blade and go to sleep soundly but never with the idea the monster could be made to comprehend if I taint myself to the same level of depravity, best remain a monster-lite. Because even that course of action I’d take is not without its own brand of reprehensible in the just world I’d rather live in.



  • There’s many answers but I genuinely fear they’re too lost in the weeds of abstraction.

    The truth is still simple; Power is useless to the common* (read: average and averagely distributed) person. It doesn’t grow crops, shoe horses, or help your fellow man, inherently.

    The common person has real concerns to worry about, leaving the search of the trappings of power for the uncommon.

    Uncommonly good* (read: beneficial for the doer and the common person) is harder than uncommonly evil* (read: beneficial for the doer but detrimental to the common person); this is simply entropy, and it readily maps to humankind’s so called capacity for thought.

    That it only takes a bit of shared effort to make lasting structures to help others and fight off sociological entropy is an uncommonly good realization:

    The common man has labors to do, the uncommonly good servant a statistical rarity and the uncommonly evil servants and the structures they engender to keep them in support (entropy begets entropy) a hurdle that by the point of realization takes an uncommonly amount of uncommon good to overcome.

    TL;DR: Human nature + time + compounding apathy in those in a position to nudge things when they were easier to nudge = a need for collective awakening to course correct. We’ve gilded the lily on our sociological underpinnings but have yet to truly revolutionize, only iterate.



  • Part of Fiction writing 101. The more things you need to 'effing name, the stupider the wordplay gets.

    Lots of visual references to make those puns work on Pokemon designs usually.

    Kanghaskhan (Garura in Japanese), is a giant Kangaroo thing with built-in laminar armor reminiscent of Mongolian make.

    At least Kanghaskhan made it to the list of B-tier sound puns to go with the visuals (and Genghis was a ruler, keeping the pun from the Japanese name that is “Kangaroo Ruler”).

    Not all Pokemon get the same wit applied to their puns, some get really groan worthy if examined haha.