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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 14th, 2023

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  • 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.




  • Yeah, this was my first thought as well as soon as I read the image. We have tons and tons of literally empty housing units. Even if you take away the ones that are only temporarily vacant while searching for a new tenant, you’re still left with a bunch of housing units that sit empty, waiting to be flipped for a profit by real estate investors.






  • 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.




  • 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.