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InitialsDiceBearhttps://github.com/dicebear/dicebearhttps://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/„Initials” (https://github.com/dicebear/dicebear) by „DiceBear”, licensed under „CC0 1.0” (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/)PU
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9 mo. ago

  • Does the head dong thing get sunburned? Does it convey a lot of heat?

    The point of a hat is to 1) keep sun out of eyes, and 2) keep the head cool by blocking the thermal radiation that is sunlight.

    So, picture 2 fails at both of those. Picture 1 is fine if the head dong thing is just unsunburnable horn and self-regulates its own temperature, plus it's less prone to being blown off by the wind.

    If the head dong thing needs to keep cool then picture 3 is the way to go.

  • Why is a next-door auto repair neighbour bad? Do you not have laws on noise?

    If you live above a proper restaurant expect no roaches ever, because they can't afford for literally a single roach to be seen in their restaurant by their customers.

  • And basically did the Action RPG equivilent of dying to the first Goomba in Super Mario Bros.’ World 1-1 at a live convention where your speedrunning skills are the main attraction

    I'm pretty sure the current standard is playing Halo and fumbling so badly you have to turn the difficulty down from Legendary to Normal, and missing your target time by over an hour (see: the Cody Miller Halo GDQ speedrun).

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  • Razors and blades - every console game has a, IIRC, ~$5 platform holder fee, which goes to Microsoft/Sony/Nintendo. So if you buy a Playstation at-cost and then buy 5 games, then Sony makes ~$25 in profit.

  • They disrupted the status quo back in 2003 (2001?), then in 2009 they were doing Linux ports, then in ~2015 they were doing HTPC stuff (and also funding Linux graphic driver dev the entire time, Linux gaming in its current state would not exist without Valve), there was their Steam Machine experiment somewhere in there (it flopped but that doesn't make it cost any less), then they were doing Steam Deck stuff. They're still paying Linux graphic devs BTW.

  • Yeah, Steam is a monopoly, but 1) they've been a monopoly since forever and there hasn't been a Comcast-ish disaster, and 2) more competition doesn't seem to actually benefit us here but could potentially make things a lot worse.

    In principle, Steam is a Sword Of Damocles just like any other Monopoly. In practice, the alternatives are EA and Epic, no thank you (I know itch.io is a good competitor, but they don't have any pull on AAA publishers so I don't expect them to take the market if Steam implodes).

    Also, Valve is innovating in ways that nobody else seems willing to - not just their Linux ports (represent!), but also their attempts on HTPC gaming (which was unnecessarily a huge pain in the ass on PC, for no good reason) and their steam controller. And their portable PC gaming with the Steam deck (which to be fair GPD probably did first).

    All in all, I'm happy to pay the Steam tax for what they're doing. I have no illusions that Epic Games Store would provide serious competition in terms of the goodies I want, because they already aren't, and they're still in their sweetheart phase.

  • Governments accepted crops. Long after the invention of currency, governments still took their cut in wheat. What kind of money is a peasant going to have? All the king’s horses eat grain. This obsession with tax is a weirdly libertarian lens on a history that’s mostly anthropology.

    States are the reason everyone uses currency. States are fundamentally an army that wields its power to pay itself, and currency is a huge force multiplier for projecting power (and therefore paying itself).

    The problem with crops is that they're hard to transport, so if you and your army try to go conquer some other land, and if the army still insists on being paid upfront (it does), then you have to haul the food, using people/animals that eat some of the food they're hauling. Now you're facing sharp logistical limitations analogous to the 'tyranny of the rocket' equation, where carrying food requires more food to feed the mules, and carrying that extra mule food requires more mules which requires more mule food.

    Currency solves that whole issue. The state forces the farmers to pay tax via currency, and so the farmers need to sell their crops for currency that they can pay tax with, and so now the soldiers can buy food from the farmers with the currency the state pays them. Carrying currency along with the army during a march is a relatively simple problem.

    And sure, farmers could trade with currency even if the state didn't exist, but ultimately farmers don't actually want to trade with others - they want to be self-sufficient (within their local community), and what few trades they do actually require (e.g. buying salt, if they live inland), can still be done with crops. And do note that salt is incredibly value-dense.

    Also, currency is mostly useless for farmers - what they'd mostly want to buy is food, during a famine. But if there's a famine, everyone is hoarding food instead of selling it. So the currency is useless to buy food. Which means other farmers would be even less willing to sell the food they're hoarding. It's like the opposite of "don't look down".

  • Solarpunk Urbanism @slrpnk.net

    A Traditional City Primer (and how modern cities are utterly broken, and even New Urbanism doesn't fix the core issue)