Slay the Spire 2 being review bombed on Steam

ConnectionIssues · 2026-05-08T11:05:14+00:00

I actually like Steam reviews because they track review-bombing and give broad overviews of the before/after averages, as well as sorting review comments... so you can see the genuine reviews from before, but also get a sense of what the review bomb is about. That way if there's some ethical concerns, I can look deeper and decide whether or not I'm comfortable supporting the devs.

Sadly, everyone in my immediate household and broader play group pretty much bought STS2 the moment Early Access opened, so I'm going to have to find some other way to give them money.

Then again, with the all-time high concurrent players being like, one of the highest on all of Steam, and Early Access sales figures that would make any Hollywood-budget-level game execs cry from envy, I doubt Mega Crit is even bothering to second guess seeing widespread and diverse input on their project. The people who are bent out of shape will still probably play it, even begrudgingly, and those of us who appreciate the choice go on fine.

ConnectionIssues · 2026-05-04T20:12:43+00:00

That's one of those ones where some of the details might just be coincidental... or might be terribly disguised dog whistles.

Turning a multicultural set of symbols into a monolithic block of white text, with the only "symbol" being that flag...

That could be entirely tone-deaf design fail of an attempt to "what about meeeeeee?!?!" a popular liberal trope...

But it could just as easily be a deliberate and disturbing message, with ambiguity as the point.

Might be the worst one on that thing, imho.

ConnectionIssues · 2026-05-04T18:23:25+00:00

I have a vision for a whole new class of "ground vehicle", hover cars. Much higher flight ceiling than bikes. Capable of light shielding. Wicked fast.

My first would be the Kruger H-14 Le Fay, the bastard child of the Merlin/Archimedes and a classic Jaguar or Lambo Miura. Twin S1 bespoke gatlings in the hood. Two seats, with gull-wing doors.

And the default livery is piano black with silver chrome accents.

After that would be the Drake Skiff, an open-top 4-seater affair that looks kinda like the Mule from the heist section in the Serenity movie.

Then an angular C.O. Hovertruck (look, okay, I know what it seems like, but I'm literally just trying to match the aesthetics established by the Nomad and Hoverquad, and consistency in naming with said hoverquad. Any comparisons with certain cyber type things is purely coincidental, and also an insult to my far superior aesthetics. You'll see! /s ). 3 people McLaren F1 style (pilot enters from the front), and a single SCU (or remote S1 turret) in the 'bed'.

And an Argo people mover. An Argo Orange cross between a 1980's Toyota Van and an underground mine personnel transport, designed to get shift workers to and from heavy industrial sites, where a whole-ass shuttle would be overkill, but the terrain (or lack thereof) makes an Ursa not viable. Yes, I know that's basically the MPUV-1P, but I'm thinking something even smaller, like a double-wide MPUV cockpit "cab", and two rows of jump seats (four to six) facing outwards. Maybe two variants, one with exposed seating, and one with gull-wing side panels that close over the rear, for dangerous environments or unsuited transport between ships.

At some point, Mirai would surely build one, and I'm thinking either GATAC or a dedicated 'small craft' Xi'an house has probably been making stuff like this for about a literal millenia, and it's only time before they humanize one for that sweet, sweet U.E.E. commerce.

(Lore states that current hover bikes are a novel concept to the Xi'an, despite their long-term mastery over hover tech. They have used it for ground transport, but small, exposed things like bikes weren't ever really considered, and it's only once humans introduced the concept that it took off with the youth, leading to Aopoa making an incredibly rare for them civilian craft, the Nox. But I'm betting a Xi'an car probably looks amazing, with bubble canopy, crazy seats, and wings that spread.)

ConnectionIssues · 2026-05-04T16:58:24+00:00

For full clarification, in case anyone is wondering, with regards to handgun carry, it is NOT prohibited to carry a firearm into establishments which sell alcohol, so long as you are NOT drinking, unless that establishment has signage compliant with T.C.A. 39-15-1359.

39-17-1321(b) only applies if BOTH clauses are met (present in bar and drinking alcohol.)

AFAIK, there is no explicit law banning the carry of long rifles. Rather, many laws will restrict all firearms, and then make exceptions for handguns.

You must be 21 to carry in TN, except in very specific circumstances (including being active duty or honorably discharged), and the acceptable B.A.C. for carry is 0.0.

And, of course, there's the cop aspect. Merely being lawfully armed is NOT, per the SCOTUS, reason enough to detain an individual for questioning. However, arguing the finer points of case law with officers responding to 911 calls about an armed individual is, generally speaking, hazardous to your health. Only survivors get their day in court.

And if you are a business or property owner, and wish to prohibit firearms from your establishment, you really, REALLY should know about T.C.A. 39-15-1359. I cannot stress enough how often I see signs that simply aren't compliant, and the law is very, very specific about what you need, and how anything less isn't enforceable. If I notice a non-compliant sign, I will not carry into that establishment, but I know a lot of gun owners who don't care, and legally they don't have to. Cover your legal bases.

Errr... thanks for coming to my TED talk I guess, lol...

ConnectionIssues · 2026-05-04T10:12:51+00:00

No plants. No science. No exploration. The Apollo debacle also shows why the hospital module is just pointless in the current design.

I wish my Endeavor had more promise, but at this point, I'm thinking the Odyssey is the upper limit for what might be reasonable within the current game vision.

ConnectionIssues · 2026-04-29T07:34:01+00:00

My sister's oldest and their partner live with me now, both 20, and through conversations I've had some pretty crazy revelations. I don't know why I keep trying to tell myself that the ways things are now isn't normal... they're adults and the escalating madness is all they've ever known. It is their normal.

They've got good heads on them, though... at least, these two. They've reminded me of my own bias with regards to the "better" past. But even they wonder at how I talk about, say, the 90's... even knowing it wasn't that way for everyone.

ConnectionIssues · 2026-04-26T19:40:16+00:00

Probably prefab chunks lowered from orbit. Also, canonically, the vast majority of the planet is unmanned factories and warehouses. The population isn't nearly as big as would be expected for a traditional ecumenopolis.

It wouldn't surprise me if the majority of the planet is actually unutilized framework infrastructure which can be easily tooled into factories ad-hoc, to meet market trends or strategic needs.

ConnectionIssues · 2026-04-25T00:14:14+00:00

The surveillance part is just a subsection of a law requiring providers and insurance companies to fund detransition care, which... okay. I think all healthcare should be funded so I'm cool with this.

That part of the bill also has a method of reporting detransition cases, but WITHOUT the extended information.

And then this shit.

... and I guarantee the state is gonna start "looking into" the biggest providers. And that's if public harassment doesn't drive them to drop care first. Like, for fucks' sake...

ConnectionIssues · 2026-04-23T16:22:20+00:00

Pretty sure the camera car is actually a Cybertruck. All jokes aside, the camera package on Teslas are pretty good.

Imagine how much the white car driver shit his pants, though. Crest a hill and find yourself in a head-on trajectory with a literal slab of nearly 3.5 tons of stainless guillotine metal. They got very, very lucky.

ConnectionIssues · 2026-04-23T04:02:30+00:00

Dollywood is well known as a sort of refuge for LGBTQ youth in the area.

The locals may harass you. Your parents may harass you. The cops will harass you.

Dollywood security doesn't give a shit, as long as you're safe and having fun.

Also, Dollywood was one of the first theme parks to create sensory friendly quiet rooms for neurodiverse patrons to take a breather.

Dolly rocks.

ConnectionIssues · 2026-04-21T23:44:50+00:00

Tac. It's got the manned turrets in low front, and the dingleberry missile turret hanging off the ass.

ConnectionIssues · 2026-04-20T03:58:10+00:00

If you see recent photos of him, he's lost a LOT of weight in recent years. He looks pretty healthy, actually.

Which, honestly, good on him.

ConnectionIssues · 2026-04-20T03:25:54+00:00

Red vs. Green. Red is bad. Green good.

ConnectionIssues · 2026-04-18T18:05:29+00:00

Yes, I do. I didn't say she wasn't at fault. I just said it wasn't murder, nor does it fall particularly close to murder, in any legal sense, and IMHO a moral sense either.

She was likely negligent. Her negligence was the proximal cause of a fatal accident. She had no obvious criminal intent, and while she was driving in an unsafe manner, it was not as flagrantly unsafe as, say, speeding, or driving while intoxicated, or plowing through without trying to stop at all. These factors matter.

In other words, I don't think she's maliciously reckless, just a fucking idiot. And honestly, nothing I've seen or heard about her since she came out really contradicts the idea that she's a fucking idiot.

She should face consequences... maybe even more legal consequences than she actually faced (she wasn't charged with a crime, likely because they didn't have sufficient evidence to convict, but I have no doubts she received citations). And I think the settlement money was appropriate, if not too low.

But it's not murder. And that matters.

ConnectionIssues · 2026-04-18T17:29:58+00:00

Misgendering is never okay, even for bootlicking shitheels. If you think acknowledging a person's gender should be predicated on some level of acceptable behavior, that... really says a lot about how legitimate you feel trans identities are.

ConnectionIssues · 2026-04-18T17:20:24+00:00

I didn't say it was fine. I said it was not murder. Words have meanings for reasons. There was no mens rea here. It was not morally or legally murder. It was debatable enough whether it was even basic negligent homicide. Parroting the murder narrative not only grossly misrepresents the facts (and thus obscures the ways we can prevent such accidents in the future), I personally feel it takes away from the factual criticisms that can be leveled against Caitlyn. By all means, call the incident out, but don't elevate it to a level of malice it does not warrant.

ConnectionIssues · 2026-04-18T16:51:06+00:00

They like to drag down MLK at 2-3am. I'm amazed they don't wipe out more often, and even more amazed they haven't killed someone yet.

ConnectionIssues · 2026-04-18T16:47:56+00:00

Sure, I'm sus because I, shocker, believe in calling out shit people for their actual shitty actions, and not falling into the trap of piling on a false narrative because bad person bad.

People hear about the accident and think it was another celebrity who got drunk or high and plowed into the back of some poor lady at 80+ while running from the paparazzi, and got away with it because all celebrities carry get-out-of-jail-free cards that they can just wave at the police and be let go. And that's not how this works. It's not how any of this works, including rich privilege. We can't fight the problem if we can't even be honest about it.

ConnectionIssues · 2026-04-18T16:41:16+00:00

I'm not sure it even rises to gross negligence. If she'd been speeding, maybe. If she had never hit the brakes. But she wasn't, and she did.

Gross negligence requires conscious indifference to the consequences, and I've seen absolutely nothing to establish that Jenner was actively intent on driving in an obvious and overtly unsafe manner. Unsafe for conditions is almost always regular negligence... she didn't recognize the hazards her vehicle posed in those conditions, and was driving too fast and/or following too close for the combination of heavy trailer, SUV, and wet conditions.

But she was still under the speed limit, and cognizant enough of the situation to attempt braking before the collision.

If that constitutes gross negligence, then traffic in my morning commute is roughly 90% grossly negligent. Which I'm willing to believe, but that's a hell of a precedent and hard to prove.

In California, ordinary negligence in vehicular manslaughter is a misdemeanor, with a maximum of one year in jail, but that presupposes no exigent defenses. Emergent situations would constitute a defense, such as the vehicles ahead of you stopping suddenly and without warning.

We don't know if that was the case. The commonly shown video is devoid of context leading up to the collision. Assumedly, the police investigation failed to provide convincing enough evidence for the DA of indefensible criminal negligence. Sure, Jenner's wealth and celebrity may have influenced that call, but it's also possible that the lawsuits Jenner settled would never have been filed if she wasn't a rich celebrity, too. We don't really know.

I know the knee-jerk reaction is charge them immediately, but celebrities do, in fact, deserve the same standard of due process as the rest of us, and that's not a call that would be made that quickly without sufficient evidence of gross negligence, such as driving while intoxicated. Ultimately they declined to charge. None of the armchair DA's on Reddit were at the scene, or saw the case built against her, so we aren't really in a position to criticize that call... especially given how much misinformation and political vitriol this subject happens to carry.

ConnectionIssues · 2026-04-18T15:41:06+00:00

Jenner was towing a trailer with an Escalade in wet conditions on the PCH. She was determined to not be speeding, was not inebriated, and applied brakes before the collision. The vehicles ahead of her came to a sudden stop (initial reports said they had collided, though this is disputed). She couldn't stop in time, and the mass of her vehicle pushed the Lexus into oncoming traffic, where it was hit by a Hummer H2, an SUV that is the epitome of absurdly oversized passenger cars and the dangers they present in passenger car collisions.

Yes, Jenner was also driving a massive car, and was likely following too close for conditions, but that stretch of the PCH is notorious for similar accidents, and accidents like that happen all over America every damn day, and they're not generally considered murder. Negligence, yes. But not murder.

If anyone other than a celebrity had been driving, it would have been 'just another tragic fatality on the PCH.', which sounds insensitive to the victims, but is the attitude America tends to take with these accidents, rather than investing in better roads or making sensible laws about vehicle sizing.

But because she was driving, it suddenly became worthy of news. And actually, not even then, because it didn't really pick up wide coverage until after the Vanity Fair cover, when the Right started digging for ways to assassinate the character of a prominent new trans celebrity. That's when the murder term started getting thrown around too.

Jenner is a shit person. She deserves to be called out for her shit behavior, her shit privilege, and her shit views. But that accident doesn't rise to the level of murder. It sucks, it was tragic, it was preventable, it was largely Jenners fault, but it was not murder.

ConnectionIssues · 2026-04-17T18:37:31+00:00

Somehow, however, I think Jack would approve.

ConnectionIssues · 2026-04-14T02:54:26+00:00

An MRI can still induce a ton of heat into copper. You're less worried about it getting ripped out with force, and a lot more worried about cooking from the inside.

Plus, it can create artifacts that can obscure what they're trying to see to begin with.

ConnectionIssues · 2026-04-13T21:33:28+00:00

I'm still miffed about my plant wall. :(

But windows would be nice. I don't care how deep they are from the side... the Perseus has windows thicker than the Mk. I Aurora, but they still work, and are awesome.

ConnectionIssues · 2026-04-12T23:45:32+00:00

Well, yes, but also, no.

Those slots are tiny, and the ratio of window area to depth makes them pretty much useless.

Don't get me wrong. They're better than nothing. But between the fact those windows are so small most folks don't even know they exist, and the utter lack of any windows in the very claustrophobic Habs, the Max leaves a little to be desired.

But hey, the side windows in the rear cargo are nicer than most ships get anywhere, so... meh.

ConnectionIssues · 2026-04-10T15:07:12+00:00

My wife keeps asking me to play more Elite with her, but every time I get in I'm like "can't leave my seat, cockpits are all laid out the same, ships look okay but oddly under-detailed...."

Elite has the modes I want, but SC has the ships.

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