Mine is Magic: The Gathering, except I fully realize that I am pulling away from it and why.

The game sparked an immense amount of joy when I picked it up in high school. Now I barely recognize the game anymore. It doesn’t truly have an identity of its own and exists in this permanent state of limbo where 3rd party IPs are taking over the demand for new product and the rules are becoming so bloated that they can’t fit them on cards anymore.

This is such an “old man yelling at clouds” moment for me, because I heard just about every reason under the sun for why people quit the game when I was playing from power creep to changing art styles to just getting priced out of the hobby in general. I realize now that those people were not wrong, they were just not the target audience anymore. I am no longer a profitable demographic to pander to. I never buy packs anymore, and I’ve even stopped buying singles and I don’t attend tournaments or collect anymore, so why would Hasbro/WotC make products for me? Especially when there are deep pocketed whales out there who will pay top dollar for their favorite crossover set, no matter how silly or out of place it might seem.

I wish I could enjoy the game the way I used to, but I just can’t be bothered to hop back in when it doesn’t feel the same anymore.

I got accused of this the other day. Some random on Steam added me because he liked my profile pic. I was bored and decided to humor him. Two sentences in and he’s like “What’s with the ChatGPT sounding responses?”.

I honestly didn’t know how to react to that.

He’s got that casual action movie hero stance.

It doesn’t matter to anybody who has already made up their mind to vote/not vote for him.

It matters that justice is done and that the system holds him accountable.

The douchiest people drive these things, I swear.

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Guestbook, hit counter, a midi file playing in the background, and a dead hyperlink to another page of the same website.

Edit: omg I can’t believe I forgot about marquees. Do that too.

The motive was that the car drove down a crowded Chinatown street during Chinese New Year. I imagine something similar might happen if a human driver tried to do the same thing. Not saying the vandals were right to wreck the car, but you don’t just creep a car down a busy street during a festival and expect nothing bad to happen to it when crowd mentality/anonymity takes over. Especially when there’s no driver so no immediate consequences/accountability. I think it was quite fortunate that it was not transporting a passenger at the time.

TurboTax lobbys the US Government heavily to keep free alternatives from existing. At one point in time, the IRS was going to allow everyone to be able to report their taxes directly via their website and Intuit and the rest of the tax preparation software developers moved heaven and earth to kill the legislation that would have allowed it.

So, to answer the question, there’s nothing wrong with TurboTax except for the fact that it’s run by a private company that charges you a fee for something that the federal government could operate for free. If you want to keep paying a 3rd party to send the IRS the information they already have, then the system works just fine.

I always thought that Fox was a cool name for a dude ever since I watched the X-Files. If I had to change my first name, that’s what I’d pick.

More proof that justice is a multi-tiered system in America. Restrictions over cruel and unusual punishment don’t apply to to the bottom rung of society when you have made the mistake of offending a rich capitalist or corporation.

No, those are usually embedded into the video itself as a segment by the content creator. However, SponsorBlock works really well and will automatically skip those bits for you (assuming someone else already put in the effort to mark the sponsored content).

The cooled seats, passenger visibility, handling characteristics, acceleration, speed, and steer-by-wire system were also appreciated. The fact that the truck gets a lot of attention, including from people who want to touch the pickup and take photos, not so much.

So they bought the attention seeker pickup truck, but got more attention than they bargained for? lol

Well, so much for the altruist Elon Musk who uses his genius intellect to make the world a better place out of the goodness of his heart and the shared benefit of humanity. if he actually gave a shit, he wouldn’t care if his compensation package was $1. He would supposedly be doing the work he is the most passionate about and cares the most about.

Nah. Richest man in the world says it’s more important that he gets paid first. He’s always been a fraud.

It depends a lot on the specific store, but I don’t usually have to wait in a line longer than about 3 people and it moves quick.

On one hand, I agree with the video that the system doesn’t solve the problem of lines at the supermarket. It was fairly obvious that they never anticipated queuing because there’s never a dedicated section for where to stand while you wait for the next available terminal, so the line often spills into the end of some aisle and blocks all the cross traffic trying to navigate to the other end of the store.

On the other, it’s not like we’re going to go back to not having to stand around and wait if we get cashiers back filling the old school checkout lines.

IMO, the way forward is going to be to eliminate pay stations altogether and do either RFID tags on all the items so you are just charged for what you take while walking out of the store, or you have a scanner in the cart so you can total up all your purchases as you shop, reducing friction at checkout.

It’s not really a big loss in my own personal experience. I kept hearing about reversible male contraceptive technologies “just on the horizon” from my early 20’s and I would have preferred getting a reversible procedure if such a thing had been available sooner, but when I turned age 35 and this tech still hadn’t seen the light of day, I asked myself if it being reversible was really such an important factor. I knew by that point that I never wanted to have any kids, and any future partner I would be with would need to be on the same page as me at a minimum, so I just went ahead and got it done while I was still in my sexual prime so I could enjoy the years I have left.

I gave up on waiting for this tech to become available and just got a vasectomy.

Buying a multi-billion dollar brand and then rebranding it has got to be in the top 10 all time most smoothbrained business decisions ever, right up there with New Coke and Blockbuster not buying Netflix.

He probably could have started his own social media site to compete with Twitter for 1/1000th of the cost and still have all the Elon poleriders hop on board. It would still be exactly as shitty as X is today, but it could have been done without destroying something somebody else built up. Not that I care, because fuck Twitter too, but if we’re looking at this from a purely strategic perspective it’s so blindingly obvious this was a bad business move.

I want people to know that life was the greatest fucking thing to ever happen to me. I loved it all, even the parts that sucked, just because I got to take it all in. The highs of joy, the lows of sadness, the good, the bad. People will say “Too bad he never got to live a full life,” but I say FUCK that! This was fucking incredible! This IS a full life because it’s the one I got, and just the chance to experience this universe is so unbelievably goddamn beautiful

I don’t have anything to add to the discussion, but that particular line resonated with me. When I was in college, one of my professors said something pretty profound that I think is relevant to this. I can’t remember if he was quoting someone of if this was original, but I’m paraphrasing it here:

“Everyone who has ever lived was alive during the greatest time to be alive.”

So I think you are absolutely right. Life is a blessing and you got to be here for the best life had to offer, and that’s awesome. We are all but motes of dust, and the span of a full life versus a life cut short is inconsequential in the grand scheme. I’m sure you’ll leave something behind that will be worthwhile and will help carry your memory forward in time.

We’re obviously talking about consumer contract law here, so the point of business relationships falling apart is moot.

If cable companies could prove to me that them pressing a button to cancel my service merits the exorbitant cancellation fees that they charge, then maybe I’d change my opinion.