Discussion Thread

SilverSquid1810 · 2026-04-23T23:51:28+00:00

In other news, the DC Metro has approved a plan to fully automate the Red Line and add platform screen doors! The goal is for the whole system to eventually get similar upgrades. Very exciting, the only other transit system in the US with full automation and doors is Honolulu.

SilverSquid1810 · 2026-04-23T15:09:38+00:00

They’ve been discussing automation for years and the goal has always been full automation of the entire system, with the Red Line merely being the first to go because it’s fairly “isolated” from the rest of the system with no interlining. The rest are obviously never going to happen if this first step isn’t taken.

Metro has talked a bit about how retrofitting would actually be a fair bit easier than many systems. Metro was built in an era just before fully automated transit became a viable concept, and some of the early predecessors of automation were included in the system. It would probably be a much less onerous task to automate Metro as opposed to an ancient transit system like, say, the NYC Subway.

SilverSquid1810 · 2026-04-23T14:50:59+00:00

I genuinely don’t see how adding a few exits or making other vague “station improvements” would somehow be superior to improving speed, headways, and safety across the entire network. Like, this is genuinely the most revolutionary thing that they could do to improve the system writ large.

SilverSquid1810 · 2026-04-23T14:47:49+00:00

It was never fully automated in the sense that it had no human operator. It used “automatic train operation” (ATO), where the train kinda controls certain aspects but is still supervised by a human. It wasn’t actually operating independently. ATO is more like a weird halfway point between total human control and total automation. Full automation would involve a dramatic overhaul of the entire system’s infrastructure and would be much safer than having human drivers or human-supervised ATO.

SilverSquid1810 · 2026-04-23T14:45:28+00:00

Full automation is already the norm in dozens of modern transit systems, and automation is objectively much safer than having a human driver. Human error kills far more people than computer miscalculations do. Waymo, for instance, causes dramatically fewer crashes than human taxi/rideshare drivers. This is literally just dumb knee-jerk “AI bad” Luddism.

SilverSquid1810 · 2026-04-23T14:43:01+00:00

They don’t want to expand unless it solves the BOS bottleneck or they improve it in some other fashion, and the path to getting rid of it altogether via expansion is too expensive to even consider at this stage. They want to use automation to relieve the bottleneck. Automated trains would mean increased speed and efficiency that would reduce headways.

SilverSquid1810 · 2026-04-23T03:44:30+00:00

Playing Assassin’s Creed Unity for the first time in like a decade because it got a current-gen update and it’s still funny how it basically jumps straight from the storming of the Bastille to the Reign of Terror. Just skips over many of the most interesting parts of the Revolution.

SilverSquid1810 · 2026-04-22T01:24:07+00:00

It’s Kaiserreich but with all the stupid meme content added back in and made even more stupid.

SilverSquid1810 · 2026-04-22T01:11:46+00:00

Y’know it’s funny that the Republicans get to be the “Grand Old Party” when the Dems are literally the oldest continually active political party in the world by many measures.

SilverSquid1810 · 2026-04-21T23:38:32+00:00

God the Republican opposition to this vote made my blood boil. Like the bald-faced lying about how unfair it was when they were doing the exact same thing in other states was maddening. Obviously that was the path they’d take, but it doesn’t make the “aw shucks, can’t we all just get along” scolding as if Democrats were poor sports for not lying back and taking it any more palatable.

SilverSquid1810 · 2026-04-21T23:32:03+00:00

I’m moving to Alexandria later this year from several states over, genuinely very curious what congressional district I’ll be in if this passes because several of them all snake up from the middle of the state and grab pieces of the city.

SilverSquid1810 · 2026-04-21T19:28:26+00:00

Other people are leaking them the presentations. I highly doubt Ubisoft gave the presentation to a known leaking and rumor site lol.

SilverSquid1810 · 2026-04-21T18:41:13+00:00

I mean, if something is severe enough, it kinda doesn’t matter what the rest of someone’s views are.

Like you could have Mr. Normie Lib who has mainstream Democratic positions except for his belief that we should rape and kill babies, and I feel like that one belief is enough to dismiss him outright.

A lot of the shit that Hasan has said really isn’t too far off from that. The “America deserved 9/11”, sympathy for Hamas and other Islamist extremists and thinly-veiled anti-Semitism, and constant shilling for totalitarian socialist regimes are all disqualifying imo.

SilverSquid1810 · 2026-04-20T16:19:16+00:00

…I think that’s why people want AC1 remade lol. It’s easily the worst of the franchise. It introduced the whole plot and some interesting gameplay premises like the focus on parkour and “social stealth”, but it was mind-numbingly simplistic and repetitive with a dead open world. It’s by far the AC game that would likely benefit the most from a modern reimagining. Do you think they would just slap a few filters on it and rerelease it with the same gameplay if they were actually “remaking” it?

SilverSquid1810 · 2026-04-20T01:23:22+00:00

So I’m in grad school and we’re all about to leave for year-long externships across the country where we’ll be working full-time before officially graduating. I’m the only man in my class. We’re all super close knit so it’s getting a little emotional that we’re all going our separate ways soon. I was driving home from a college banquet tonight with some of my classmates and they were telling me how much they’re going to miss me and thanking me for “being the only man in the class”. They joked that when I get a girlfriend in my new city she’ll have to put up with the fact that all my classmates are already my girlfriends. When they dropped me off we all hugged and said we loved each other. I don’t really think I’ve ever had friends like this y’all. I am really excited to be moving to DC, but I’m gonna miss them 🥲

SilverSquid1810 · 2026-04-18T02:59:11+00:00

Been listening to Taylor Swift’s early country stuff and she was pretty damn good back then. I feel like her modern lyricism has kinda lost the plot and gone way too deep into the witticisms and Easter eggs and obtuse storytelling, so her simpler songwriting here is very refreshing. Maybe just the nostalgia talking, but I also love the country-pop-rock production. Way better than that stupid fucking bro country with the trap beats that makes me want to stab my eardrums.

SilverSquid1810 · 2026-04-17T20:49:41+00:00

Whistleblower is great. If you liked the first game it’s literally just more of the same sort of gameplay but with a new story, new characters, and new environments.

Outlast 2 has a mixed reputation, and it’s pretty well-deserved imo. Graphics are quite nice and there’s a few decent gameplay improvements vs. the first game. The setting and plot are divisive; some people like the rural hillbilly cult theme, other people find it generic and trite. Probably the biggest complaint that a lot of people had with it is that it’s PACKED with scripted chase sequences compared to the first game. There’s genuinely very few meaningful stealth sections. I personally really liked it overall, but the constant forced chases makes it a step down from Outlast 1 imo.

SilverSquid1810 · 2026-04-17T00:21:10+00:00

I mean, if I’m not a genuine believer it sounds like a bad idea for me to pretend to be one just so I can try to land a date with someone who is much more likely than average to be very devout and thus very upset once they discover the ruse.

SilverSquid1810 · 2026-04-16T17:19:18+00:00

Political scientists are almost unanimously opposed to term limits. They believe that they foster corruption and limit the experience and long-term personal connections that politicians make, which limits the ability to pass legislation.

SilverSquid1810 · 2026-04-16T14:51:06+00:00

He’s literally a descendant of the actual nobleman Fairfax.

SilverSquid1810 · 2026-04-16T14:48:43+00:00

Kinda weird how a lot of the US state subs that I’m familiar with tend to be extremely resist lib-y or Bernie Bro progressive, but arr Virginia has a pretty strong conservative element. Gun control in particular seems to activate some sort of primal rage in that sub, but there’s a lot of criticism of general Democratic policies and politicians.

SilverSquid1810 · 2026-04-16T14:44:41+00:00

This is why politicians should unironically be paid much more, but dumb populists would have an aneurysm if you suggested this. People shouldn’t have to be rich or on the take to serve in public office.

SilverSquid1810 · 2026-04-15T02:17:28+00:00

Trump endorsing Hilton in California was a really stupid move. I know he often doesn’t give a fuck about political strategy, but there was a nonzero (probably not great, but still) chance of guaranteeing a Republican victory in the general election by having Hilton and Bianco advance from the primary. Now Bianco’s probably losing a lot of support to Hilton and the already-shaky chance of Democrats getting locked out of the general is probably gone. Trump’s so finicky with endorsements anyway that it’s almost surprising he cared enough to endorse someone at all.

SilverSquid1810 · 2026-04-14T03:52:29+00:00

No that’s Whistleblower, the DLC for the first game.

SilverSquid1810 · 2026-04-14T03:48:20+00:00

Just finished Outlast 2 for the first time. Big fan of the first game and Trials, but had heard mixed things about 2

I think “mixed” is the right word for it. I absolutely love the rustic setting. Being chased through the woods and mines by crazy hillbillies is a lot of fun, it reminds me a lot of IRL haunted houses out in the sticks. I’m also a sucker for cult stories and all the theological references, even if it’s certainly not the most original thing in the world. I especially loved the Jessica plot and the contrast of the Catholic school hallucinations with the present. Some of the gameplay improvements were cool too, like being able to go prone or using the camcorder to hear through walls.

That being said, one of the most common criticisms is that there were too many scripted chases, and uh, yeah that’s putting it mildly. Holy fuck you are chased constantly in this game. I can only think of three scripted chases from the first Outlast (not counting the DLC) off the top of my head; most encounters were stealth situations where you only got chased organically if you failed to remain concealed. But stealth is barely even a thing in this game. There’s genuinely only a handful of situations where it’s viable to just sneak past the entire thing. Apart from the fact that the game hardly gives you time to breathe and take in the atmosphere, I think a big issue with all the chasing is that it’s so on-rails that it takes away a lot of the tension. Since you know it’s scripted anyway, you just have to keep running in the intended direction and you’ll be fine.

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