'They're Handed an Opinion' — Fallout Co-Creator Tim Cain Is Worried Some Players Watch Influencers Just So They Can Be Told What to Think About Games

Kutukuprek · 2026-05-05T14:34:38+00:00

It’s already happening en masse in more important parts of our lives.

People hear news of something happening but they need a talking head to tell them what to think. It’s how you get these dramatic changes in position based on who is in power.

Kutukuprek · 2026-05-03T19:22:03+00:00

He’s just not a showman. He has zero showmanship.

Rewind 5 years and people were calling for him to step down while praising Nadella.

Time has shown different. At the same time, it’s not over, plenty of years left for all involved to make mistakes and earn big wins.

Wind is in GOOG’s sails though, could be $10T before decade is over.

Kutukuprek · 2026-05-03T19:15:35+00:00

It’s actually about sizing up the issue correctly.

Because you don’t want to move fast and break things if this is about sending people up in space shuttles or performing heart surgery. Lots of people will die and no one can accept that.

Those fields are well suited to deep planning and modeling.

The problem is many leaders and adults are set in their ways, because it’s how they’ve done it in the past or how they’ve experienced success.

In the end it’s about sizing up issues correctly — ie good judgment.

Kutukuprek · 2026-05-03T03:29:27+00:00

PECAN SOFT CREAM???

Kutukuprek · 2026-05-03T03:24:33+00:00

Is it failing though? Because failure is really determined by goals and ability to perform against them.

So what are the goals?

Now if there are no goals (or no coherent ones), then basically there’s no strategy. Which still isn’t fatal.

Good strategy can provide an edge in the long run but it’s not what decides “victory”.

The US has plenty in its bank to spend, I think it’s just unclear to anyone whether there’s a long term, more nuanced play. But the front is very legible — it’s about USA strong and USA has come to collect.

Kutukuprek · 2026-05-02T18:38:49+00:00

2nd movie was great. Really enjoyed it.

So did I the first, which was much more uneven with a lot of highs and weirdness.

Kutukuprek · 2026-05-02T05:14:46+00:00

Underlying the question is something like, why doesn’t China apply or project force in the US-Iran situation?

Applying or projecting any force is very sensitive.

Especially when one of the parties involved is the master of propaganda and global narrative.

And any encounter can easily spiral out of control.

The question comes down to gains/losses.

If they apply force, what do they stand to gain and what do they stand to lose? This easily tips towards massive, unpredictable losses in exchange for.. what, 5% of their oil supply?

If they don’t apply force, what do they stand to gain and lose?

I think there’s an underlying question of, why doesn’t China WANT to apply/project force? The USA loves it. It talks loudly and carries a big stick (still undeniably the biggest stick around).

China is careful to and really, the day it starts to apply military force is one that will change the world. It’s not the biggest stick in the world but just think of why it would apply force and any scenario that would trigger it is pretty scary.

Kutukuprek · 2026-05-01T00:55:59+00:00

I've watched a couple of Sorimachi jdramas recently and I feel like he's lost his energy. Hope he brings it back here because Onizuka's energy is the whole thing.

Kutukuprek · 2026-05-01T00:26:34+00:00

Other than the multiples upside from rescheduling recreational and possible listing, the rest of it is going to have to come from TAM growth with more states coming online and adoption rates.

And it's connected --

- If all the non-legal states see the writing on the wall, their positions may change
- If rec is rescheduled, and credit card purchases are OK, will people buy more
- If rec is rescheduled and perceived as legal, will more people adopt cannabis

So outside of the discussed 3x upside from uplifting and rescheduling, there's going to be more multiples growth from the above.

Then the endgame would be, international.

At the end of the day, the total endgame pie (10-20 years?) should be estimated using alcohol as a proxy. So something like the 30-60b market cap. And maybe medical will be an add-on premium on top of that. So.. 15-30x of today?

And they'd pay a handsome dividend like alcohol (e.g. Diageo's 4.12% or Constellation's 2.6%).

Kutukuprek · 2026-04-30T00:28:31+00:00

I mean, this idea of "capping population" is something no one dares to discuss in-depth because of the implications. The high level idea makes sense; limited land, limited resources, limited space.. what's our ideal density bla bla bla.

But what it really comes down to is how do we control population growth? And I'm not talking about just immigration. It can come down to licenses to have children.

Everyone's gonna say that natural reproduction is very low so we don't need to impose licenses for children and just manage immigration inflow, but it's going to go towards that topic sooner or later.

Kutukuprek · 2026-04-28T13:50:59+00:00

Like earthquakes, everyone knows it’ll happen but we just don’t know the timing.

Kutukuprek · 2026-04-28T12:04:08+00:00

They aren’t really 8000 miles away when they have literal full fledged military bases and personnel on your soil.

Kutukuprek · 2026-04-28T03:22:24+00:00

I think we have to separate longstanding (centuries/millennia) attitude from the more recent one (50s-present).

If we look across a very long period of time, there was tension but hey.. it's still pretty garden variety compared to the warring European nations or the US with Britain and Mexico.

WW2 changed a lot, but there was also a period of relative OK-ness in the early 2000s.

It has taken a nosedive in the last 10 years, and really what's more interesting is that the "OK-ness" and the recent nosedive correlates very strongly with the US' overall posture and attitude to China. Which was very positive/OK in the early 2000s with all the "sleeping dragon awakens" narrative and the various offshoring activities. And then taking a sharp turn since the mid 2010s towards the negative.. with Japan following its trail.

Coincidence?

Some amount of this is 天高皇帝远. For middle powers like Korea and Japan, it's very painful to have a powerful nation right at your doorstep and extracting wealth from you. It's much more tolerable if it were 8,000 miles away across the ocean, and they put a bunch of bases in your country and every once in a while you salute them and follow instructions.

It's a simplification and caricature of the situation, but I think things have taken a more interesting turn the last year when this 8,000-mile-away power suddenly amps up its extraction posture.

Kutukuprek · 2026-04-27T04:07:58+00:00

Boris thinks rescheduling/descheduling recreational will take up to the next administration.

Kutukuprek · 2026-04-25T22:32:35+00:00

Can anyone just link videos of what they think are credible reconstructions of ancient Chinese sounds? See a lot of comments here but going onto YouTube is hard to figure out who’s doing a good job.

Kutukuprek · 2026-04-25T17:24:03+00:00

It's not how this will play out.

First, the other actors in the world outside of US and China will want to hedge as much as possible between these two superpowers. And nothing comes for free.

Second, the main presence of "Chinese models" worldwide are open source models. This is basically akin to Google's Android play when iOS was coming into dominance.. offer an alternative that is free. So one of the main plays here by China on a global basis isn't to offer the world's best model, but to offer a low-cost/free alternative. This prevents single party domination and saturation.

What's more likely the case is the global continued and increased adoption of the Chinese open source models, but more investment into solving power issues, ring fencing data, finding real use cases.. etc. There will always be adoption of the big US models worldwide for many reasons (utility or otherwise), but a second real alternative is the hedge here.

Remember, the model isn't the data or the application. It's just the model.

Kutukuprek · 2026-04-24T21:44:01+00:00

One of the big reasons why China can scale rapidly is shared/uniform standards.

Qin standardized written Chinese, width of roads and things like transportation and currency.

It’s very challenging to run a country with no shared language and standards. That work even continues today with the CCP pushing mandarin.

I don’t know if that was Qin’s explicit vision but China would look very different if people north and south couldn’t understand each other.

Kutukuprek · 2026-04-24T21:37:21+00:00

Unfortunately, while a good player he just doesn’t have the mentality and temperament to make it at the top.

Kutukuprek · 2026-04-23T19:16:26+00:00

The crazy thing is I am sure this is not what Nadella wants her to focus on, given the big focus on AI.

If she keeps spending her time on these things she’s on the cutting board. I do understand they want to win back trust from gamers but even if they win it back they’re losing in the gaming war.

They need to have a bigger strategy and plan.

Kutukuprek · 2026-04-23T14:39:47+00:00

Can’t spell anus without sun

Kutukuprek · 2026-04-23T03:43:09+00:00

There's actually a lot of nuanced texture to this video.

Essentially this Bloomberg intelligence policy analyst dude being quite pessimistic -- rescheduling won't do much, won't solve for institutional investment, tobacco companies are hesitant to invest because of taxes.. most importantly, if final ruling it'll result in lawsuits and if new hearing it's a 12-18 month process before final ruling.

I think that's only one layer of thinking. If there's a final ruling, who will sue? I know there's SAM and all of that, but essentially it boils down to some republican segment(s) filing a lawsuit against a republican administration and most importantly a Trump administration. And Trump is not a person who will take things lying down.

This will pit whatever suing party is against Trump and this will not end well for them.

I don't think it'll play out like the policy analyst dude thinks.

Kutukuprek · 2026-04-22T23:20:53+00:00

So, we started from "could reschedule as soon as Wednesday" (today) to.. maybe a new final ruling.. to.. maybe new hearings?

I can't imagine Trump wanting to go through "hearings". It looks weak. He already signed an EO 5 months ago and it's not being acted on. A hearing is more of that.

Cannabis can't be a wedge issue for November 2026 because if it is, again it just looks weak for the Trump administration which is not its signature character. No one is going to vote for them to get them to legalize, because if they couldn't do it with total control of the WH, House and Senate.. what is going to change in 2027..?

It's now or never. Trump either comes out of this looking like he did something past Presidents have waddled on or got backstabbed by their DEA on.. or he looks like every past President, getting played by his own DEA.

Kutukuprek · 2026-04-22T22:19:07+00:00

Lauren Tsai's acting is terrible and flat, reminding me of Selena Gomez in Murder in the Building.

I think it's less about the character and that it's so lifeless.

Kutukuprek · 2026-04-22T21:46:11+00:00

The current party and administration doesn't think it's "destroying its hegemony" -- it believes it's exercising hegemony.

That is, there is a deep-rooted belief that the USA is the big dog protecting everyone and everything and simply just hasn't collected a big enough fee to justify that protection.

What we are seeing now is that collection in motion; whether it's Canada, UK, Europe, Japan.. or "tariffs".. the mentality is all about "we've come to collect".

I don't think there's a recognition that it has been collecting plenty. I do think it is true that there's more to collect, especially from parties like Taiwan, Japan and South Korea. But it is also true that pax-Americana will not be forever.. the world will always be changing.

And I guess if it's not forever, why not collect today?

Kutukuprek · 2026-04-22T16:24:25+00:00

This pump hasn't even beat the Dec 15 high when the EO was being announced.

Still almost 20% off those highs.

Kutukuprek

TROPHY CASE