A bunch of (5 states) ranked choice voting ballot measures were just rejected directly by citizens, and another went so far as to ban it, and many red states have already done that. Team money won by convincing the public to vote against their own interests. Sorry to bear bad news, maybe there’s something else to be hopeful about still but I’m not seeing it. The only good news I’ve heard in American politics since the election was within the last few weeks, and it gets you banned on most of the Internet for saying so.

Same happens every time I’ve tried to use it for search. Will be radioactive for this type of thing until someone figures that out. Quite frustrating, if they spent as much time on determining the difference between when a user wants objective information with citations as they do determining if the response breaks content guidelines, we might actually have something useful. Instead, we get AI slop.

I’ve played both Balatro and Hades, both are rogue likes, Balatro is just in the subgenre of deck builder. Balatro’s gameplay loop is closer to Hades than to poker, you’re wrong or uninformed to say otherwise. No one is playing Balatro and getting addicted to gambling and going off to play poker, but I can totally see it being a gateway to the rogue-like genre.

I’m certainly not arguing against content moderation for the littles. I just disagree with the reasons they cite, you know, the whole video games cause violence, and the bigger brother that is whatever BS puritanical religious zealots come up with to force their opinions on the pubic. Define a list of things we don’t want kids to see / know about at various ages, and why, then go on from there. There’s way too much bullshit in the laws that are just prior generations trying to force the next generations to not change, which is their prerogative, I just wish we could be honest about it.

If Balatro is gambling then so is every game that has a chance based mechanic. Genshin Impact is PEGI 12 and you can spend money on loot boxes, which is absolutely gambling. Balatro is identical to Hades, except you fight with cards.

The law is poorly written, or is being applied incorrectly here. Balatro is in no way simulating a casino, which I’d be more inclined to say games that do that should have a more mature rating. Bit of a slippery slope though, nothing stops a casino from adding a new game that mimics an existing genre of video game mechanics, and then regulators saying the entire genre is gambling. It’s all pearl clutching, not backed by any science, etc. made by the same people that want to ban Mortal Kombat and think Counter Strike causes school shootings.

They could release just swap a dozen words, it wouldn’t get this rating. None of those words are required for it to be a good game. The essence of gambling that society wants to protect children from is not part of Balatro any more than it is Solitaire.

Yeah, and King George III had all sorts of shit written down that people in governing roles agreed to. People under tyranny were pretty upset and tried diplomacy back then as well. Violence is what eventually solved it, and the people that went through that wanted to make sure violence was always an option, hence the 2nd amendment. Anyone, Republican or Democrat, that says otherwise is just wrong.

It wouldn’t surprise me if it’s still competitive for a lot of markets, and if it’s not it’s because cable has been lowering prices to become competitive. Everyone I know 15 years ago was paying $300 once you added up TV, Internet, and cell phone bills. Accounting for inflation, that’s $450 today. I heard my grandma was being ripped for $350 a couple of years ago, and she just wanted a single channel. Hard to find anyone under an age that even has TV service, and those that do just want it for sports. At the original price of YT TV it was cheap enough to say why not, at the current price, even if it’s cheaper than cable, it’s now twice as much as I’d ever want to pay for it.

That’s a nice analogy. If the world was sane and just, those in power would quickly get their shit in order now that they’ve been reminded what the 2nd amendment was actually meant for. Doesn’t matter if it’s king, president, or CEO, people in power over Americans are meant to respect the threat of violence.

Hate the right and the NRA skewing it for stupid individual self defense reasons just as much as the Democrats trying to claim it has something to do with militias.

That’s great, probably better for life happiness to just not look very closely, and ignore research like this. I doubt anyone is getting sick, even if it is certainly spraying stuff around.

Also, how is their research any worse than the one sponsored by Dyson, who is trying to sell overpriced hand dryers.

Anyone who has ever seen one of these more than a few weeks old knows how disgusting they get because cleaning crews were never trained to clean them. I’m assuming that isn’t considered in Dyson’s version of the research at all. There’s one in a bathroom in my area that is covered in mold.

Are you comparing raw dollars or percentage of property tax? Accounting for inflation and the increase of your property value? What about the whole situation where Texas collects the taxes but only disburses up to some amount to schools. Probably easier to just look at the ISD financials. Just need to remove all expenses for non education activities, like sports and administration. I wonder if the ISD funding also gets used to pay for ISD specific police. Just asking questions, without actually doing the work, betting teachers have lost way more than 30% in 5 years. Texas government is actively trying to prove that public education doesn’t work so they can justify privatization, and bring back legal segregation plus religious schooling funded by taxes.

Don’t discount the amount of common people that are totally onboard with killing everyone in another tribe. There have been plenty of times when leaders are the only reason diplomacy happens in the face of a bloodthirsty population, though certainly more common that war happens because leaders channel the energy of that bloodthirst as it is easier and the benefits (to themselves first, their tribe second) are thought to outweigh the risks. Look through history and you’ll see enough instances of leaders trying to keep the peace only to be killed by their bloodthirsty population and replaced by someone who will act.

I wish we could all just get along, but so far the only effective deterrent in all of history has been the threat of destruction, either by a sufficiently powerful peace mongering leader, or MAD that nuclear weapons established. I suspect the next change in this dynamic, if MAD holds true, is some real AI that takes the reigns. It would be hard to rule break if we had an omniscient leader that could kill you within seconds.

Have to disagree, at least back then it was the first exposure most kids got to using a computer for work at all. Even if some of the content isn’t useful for most kids, it still challenges kids to learn some basic stuff they might not otherwise. I do think it’s a shame that it’s required even if you already know how to do everything the course teaches, but that could be said about most classes. Everyone needs to know basic computing shit, forcing people to learn Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and some other random apps is a fine way to do that, and those apps aren’t going anywhere in our lifetime, nor have they changed in a way that invalidates anything taught 20 years ago. I work with people who use a computer full time for their job and it’s obvious they didn’t take a basic course when they were in school 20-30 years ago, or any time since. I have nephews that are 11-15, haven’t taken anything like that yet and they are totally inept with even basic shit, because it wasn’t taught yet and most people don’t just learn without instruction.

Your last point about usefulness to a very limited set of jobs is silly considering how much actual useless to 99% of jobs shit they teach in the core curriculum. If we didn’t throw all this mostly useless shit at the whole of young society, some future great scientist, artist, mathematician, etc. would rot in ignorance, at least that’s the theory. Hard to say if the American education system is working at all though.

Counterpoint, most of the stuff I learned in my highschool A+ class (aimed at teaching you enough to pass a certification test that proves you can repair computers) was outdated already that year, and it’s like 95% outdated now. Typing and business productivity app skills are still directly valuable for most modern people.

Most valuable skills are things like learning how to learn, critical thinking, judgement, understanding the value of time, humility, etc. I’ll say that the A+ course was much better than most classes at growing those skills for me, but I could say the same thing about the construction course I took. American school system, at least when I was in it, is totally happy to output kids that only know math, science, english, and arts. It’s hard to teach those life skills, harder to test for them, do we just don’t.

I am a rhythm game enjoyer, I’ve genuinely played Cytus. At this point I’d consider the best mobile rhythm game, but I don’t play it often as I’m not stuck playing only on a phone that often. Like, only play it on airplanes sometimes. I did fiend it for a bit when I first discovered it (10 years ago already?). Much easier to master than any other rhythm game I’ve played, might be part of why I don’t play it more.