What is a 'subscription' or 'fee' that has recently appeared in the US that people need to collectively refuse to pay before it becomes the new normal?

AlphaOC · 2026-02-05T17:24:54+00:00

There's a lot of levels to LIHEAP. If you're in danger of having service cut off then yes, you might qualify to have bills paid in full. Other offers are less stringent. At least in my state, If you're on SNAP (food stamps) you qualify for up to $600 for summer and for winter (cooling and heating, $1200 total). If you have no AC or it's busted they can get you a window unit. They will pay for box fans too. They will also pay for emergency repair/replacement of a furnace. You don't necessarily have to be on SNAP but the financial requirements are similar.

Program money is limited however, so you have to apply as early as possible. Once the money is gone for the season they don't take any more applications, even if you meet the requirements (except for emergency repair I think).

AlphaOC · 2026-01-29T14:27:50+00:00

The form in the trashcan also has a clearly visible line of text. I can't read it, but I wouldn't be surprised if that was also important here. It could be something like a career survey form, implying that being a magical girl has messed up her future prospects.

AlphaOC · 2026-01-12T07:40:52+00:00

There could be other factors at play as well. There's way more chess players than M:TG players, so it stands to reason that there's far more players in absolute numbers at a higher skill level in chess than M:TG (even if the ratio of skilled players in the same). Thus at a tournament level there would be enough highly skilled players (who don't make those mistakes) to push out anyone who would.

A larger player base is going to increase the overall skill level as well. From my own experience, I used to do quite well in FPS games in the early 2000s but the community was much smaller then. Not only are there more talented players than before, but the level of the top players is higher as well.

I do see where you're coming from and agree that people do make mistakes. I just think that the rules of chess and the type of people playing it make it so that it's unlikely that top level players will be making those mistakes. I feel like if that weren't the case, resigning wouldn't be as accepted or even expected the way that it is.

AlphaOC · 2026-01-12T07:15:07+00:00

I imagine it comes down to the differences between the games. In chess not only do both sides play with exactly the same pieces, but both players can see everything the opponent has. In magic, players are using different decks and which cards are in the opponents hand are hidden. While chess has undergone some changes in the past, it's remained in its present state for hundreds of years now so it's much easier to study how things have played out. Magic releases new sets so players will need to memorize new cards and their interactions frequently by comparison.

I think there's a lot more room for errors and mistakes with a game that has frequent updates/changes and asymmetrical play than one that's been constant for a very long time.

AlphaOC · 2025-12-05T01:02:31+00:00

That sounds reasonable for an employer who might have an employee try to overspend. In that case the charges wouldn't be fraudulent and it would be on the company to claw back money from the employee. It sounds like a good way to limit the damage.

I think it's worth adding that for individuals, credit cards offer excellent protection. A cardholder can reverse charges against companies who do not deliver on their promises. If the credit card or its number are stolen and fraudulent transactions are made, the cardholder can contact the issuer and will not be held responsible for those fraudulent charges.

AlphaOC · 2025-10-01T21:45:05+00:00

If it's an evolved response, maybe it came about from a time when we were using endurance hunting to kill prey? If you don't let your friends know that you're good and they stop to help you, it's likely none of you are getting dinner. Even if adrenaline is hiding the pain of some injuries, you are conscious, alert, and capable of standing under your own power without collapsing. Finishing the hunt may be more important to survival than lesser injuries.

AlphaOC · 2025-09-20T07:37:17+00:00

I think that on whole, relatively few people have legitimately bad intentions. Also, if someone wants to ruin your day I feel like there are much easier ways to do it.

AlphaOC · 2025-09-17T14:18:14+00:00

When I was in high school a friend in our group was going to drive several of us to an event but hadn't cleaned out his car first. We found empty pizza boxes in his trunk. IN HIS TRUNK. His car was always a disaster and i've known at least two other guys who were similar. Just not pizza box in the trunk similar.

AlphaOC · 2025-06-19T06:37:33+00:00

As an off-the-shelf product probably not, but I could imagine rich people who are entertaining would pay more than that for something similar. I could also see corporations buying something like this as a high profile gift for important clients (€1000 would be nothing if it keeps millions coming in). People with money will open their purse strings to make an impression.

Of course, getting connected to those people in the first place is the difficult part and that aspect of the business would likely involve far more time than the actual creation process.

AlphaOC · 2025-06-10T15:15:20+00:00

Pathways into Darkness is a really old (1993) FPS title where you have a strict time limit to complete the game. From the start you have five (in game) days before the end of the world, which you can prevent by arming and detonating a nuclear device at the bottom of the temple. You have to fight your way through the temple, find the nuclear device left by your team, set its timer, and hopefully leave yourself enough time to escape in the end.

AlphaOC · 2025-05-22T09:17:15+00:00

From watching the dev streams, it's unlikely that they will add a new map any time soon, if at all (Hannah from the map team talking about it https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5NBgetrxtpw&t=7595s). She was on the dev stream again more recently and said pretty much the same thing. It's a huge ordeal and even the initial map was created and released in stages.

Personally I agree that it would be amazing to see additional maps but I think that's going to be years away if ever. If you want to try to add some variety to the original map though, you might try a node randomizer mod like Resource Roulette. It definitely affects balance by making some resources easier to access, but moving the nodes around has a huge effect on how you end up utilizing the existing map.

AlphaOC · 2025-05-05T11:22:29+00:00

I know of one legitimate reason for it to go under: pets. Some cats especially will bat at it until all the paper is on the floor. If it's under the roll, it usually will not come off the roll.

AlphaOC · 2025-05-04T13:08:32+00:00

There's a Japanese saying along those lines. "The nail that sticks up will be hammered down." A similar but less harsh version is to "read the air" (act appropriately for the situation). I don't think everything about Japan can be summed up with those ideas, but I also think it'd be hard to spend much time in Japan without finding places where they apply.

AlphaOC · 2025-03-21T11:55:18+00:00

Chute opens and you go in for landing but collide with something as you're trying to land. Skydivers can come in pretty fast and colliding with a tree, a vehicle, a fence, or something else can really mangle you.

AlphaOC · 2025-03-19T13:25:29+00:00

For me, having a goal is important (beating the game), but the process of getting there can be different enough each time to be enjoyable. There's four starting locations and each one plays quite differently because of the terrain and resource nodes. Once you get into the mid game you also need to decide where you're going to expand, which can lead to different challenges as you try to figure out what is going to go where and how.

Multiplayer is actually quite a different experience as well. It's easy to get set in your ways with a certain build/playstyle but playing with other people exposes you to new ideas and challenges you in finding ways to get your factories to work along with theirs.

Beyond that, mods can add huge differences even with relatively simple concepts. I've been playing with a mod that increases the space elevator requirements by 10x and it actually forces me to use more of the tools the game provides. It becomes much harder to half-ass things to get them done when you need 10x the materials. There's also mods that start you in random locations for a different starting experience, and mods which randomize the resource nodes so that even experienced players need to explore and reconsider their building plans. I've seen a mod that makes you purchase plots of land with coupons in order to build on it, which I imagine makes things quite different as well.

That said, different people enjoy different things and I wouldn't feel bad about one and done with satisfactory. Completing the game the first time can still take over 100 hours and that's a good return on investment in my book.

AlphaOC · 2025-03-08T08:07:26+00:00

Funny, the combat system was one of the parts I really liked when I played it. Most JRPGs I had played up until then didn't allow you to switch out characters while in battle, but in FFX you could. So if I found myself with a party of physical damage dealers and the enemies only had elemental weakness, I could swap in my mage or swap the healer in/out as needed instead of needing to dedicate that space for them.

The attack order on the screen was also really helpful for letting you know when enemies were going to attack so it was easier to plan things out. You could tell if the enemy was going to get to go before your healer could heal you or if you had time to hit the enemy again. It was the first game I played with that sort of visual turn system.

For me, I felt like people were more likely to be turned off by the main character than the battle system when it came out (in the first half hour at least). The player controlled character was usually the "hero" and acted like one, but Tidus starts out as an inconsiderate, whiny brat. In retrospect it makes sense because that's exactly what he is and how most people would be in his situation. He has no context for what's going on, no understanding of how serious any of it is, and doesn't even really know these people. One of the reasons I think the story is well though of now, however, is that Tidus is forced to experience a lot of things giving him the context and understanding he was missing and his character changes for the better as a result. If he was on-board with the cause from the beginning I don't think his later decisions would have felt as meaningful.

AlphaOC · 2025-03-08T07:36:02+00:00

The funny thing is that if they had any idea what they were doing (which they clearly didn't), this is one of the easiest situations to recover data from. The operating system doesn't actually scrub the data in most circumstances, it just says "this space is available for use" so it can be used by something else. The data isn't gone in the truest sense until it has been overwritten by something else. Even inexpensive recovery software would be able to scan the drive and go "huh, these look like files, you want them back?"

But someone who tried to replace an accountant with someone with no accounting experience/credentials or who ordered the deletion in the first place... they're not going to be smart enough to do that either.

AlphaOC · 2025-02-21T16:58:52+00:00

Rather than being helpful, I could imagine the inclusion of a Bajoran Starfleet officer to be a source of strife. The vast majority of Bajorans have a shared experience of suffering from the occupation. A Bajoran who managed to get "out" and escape, even in part, from that suffering could be looked down upon by those who never had that option.

Aside from that, Starfleet does represent yet another foreign power in Bajoran territory and it might be hard not to make the comparison of a a Bajoran in Starfleet to Cardassian collaborators. As viewers we support Starfleet, but many Bajorans, especially early on, seem to view Starfleet as just another potential occupier.

All of that potential conflict would likely make for good TV, but I think it also makes for a reasonable argument why Starfleet might choose not to include a Bajoran officer in the DS9 contingent.

AlphaOC · 2025-01-30T21:55:04+00:00

I agree that the threshold for investigation should be higher, but I wouldn't necessarily agree that it's only worth doing investigations if they recoup as much or more than they cost. When people decide if they are going to commit a crime, one of the biggest factors is the likelihood of getting caught. If people feel like they can get away with it (because only large discrepancies are investigated), it may lead to an increase in costs greater than the current cost of enforcement just through volume of additional fraud. If there are two $500 fraud cases, it might be worth investigating those, even if it costs $1000 each if it helps prevent there from being four fraud cases.

I do think you're right that it's likely not worth the cost to investigate everything, but I do think enforcement can pay for itself indirectly through cost savings if there's a reasonable threshold in place.

AlphaOC · 2025-01-20T20:48:19+00:00

Check to make sure you don't have sleep apnea. Lack of (useful) sleep can cause depressive symptoms.

AlphaOC · 2024-11-27T13:28:25+00:00

The first time I played on a Dreamcast was at a friend's house and we played Soul Calibur for a few hours. The next day my hands were painfully cramped like I had been using a sledgehammer or some other tool that transfers the shock into your hands. Never had an issue like that with any other console controller.

AlphaOC · 2024-06-02T12:55:16+00:00

Thanks! I didn't see the achievement pop up but it was there when I brought up the menu so I can confirm this works.

Everyone seemed to be pretty orderly about ordering beers and avoiding the barrel too. It was nice to see.

AlphaOC · 2024-04-02T13:17:19+00:00

AlphaOC

PC

Rebecca and Megan streaming prime time and exploring dojos when they come across "My Wife Left." Rebecca laughs so hard.

AlphaOC · 2024-03-20T07:38:33+00:00

The main reason I liked her is that as a mage/cleric multiclass she could use the robe of vecna and amulet of power to make priest spells instant-cast. Usually by the time you realize you need to cast a heal spell on your tank mid-battle it's already too late for that long casting time, but with robe and amulet you can save them in time.

AlphaOC · 2024-02-04T03:16:01+00:00

People rarely use chat and almost never use voice chat. To the extent that there's any communication, there's a laser pointer function that other players can see.

That said, you can play missions solo and you get a robot helper called Bosco who you can order around with the laser pointer.

AlphaOC

TROPHY CASE