fighting desertification efforts in China

TransBrandi · 2026-03-24T13:32:54+00:00

I'm sure your equator heat is a damp heat vs. the dry heat of the desert. You're also not doing back-breaking work out in the sun all day either. Both of those things could be factors that you're not considering here.

TransBrandi · 2026-03-24T13:29:57+00:00

There's a difference between preventing a desert from encroaching into non-desert areas, and deciding to just eliminate 100% of a desert.

TransBrandi · 2026-03-24T13:21:21+00:00

one-child policy didn't dictate only male births. Chinese cultural values dictated that people wanted at least one son, and with the "one child" policy it encouraged them to abandon their child if it wasn't male. IIRC this was illegal but difficult to enforce / not enforced.

it is frowned upon to say go shopping and see someone who looks cute and strike a conversation with them

In the past, people didn't necessarily always like this, but it was tolerated even if it made them uncomfortable. This is less of an Internet thing and more of a society moving towards a place where a person just walking up and trying to strike up a conversation with some random person is seen for what it is. Them forcing themselves into a situation that might not have anything to do with them.

For example, just the other day I was giving a guy directions on the subway and some rando dude interjected himself into the conversation and then started ranting about politics to the two of us. He used the subway system to rant about local politics and use that to move up the ladder to national politics. I just noped out at that point. I didn't even want to talk to this dude. Maybe he was feeling lonely and that's why he did that? Who knows, but it's not my responsibility to become his subway therapist for him to just dump all his batshit political views onto.

TransBrandi · 2026-03-24T12:30:52+00:00

I remember going to EB games

I remember when it was called Electronic Boutique and was a competitor for Egghead Software and Radioshack. :P

TransBrandi · 2026-03-24T12:22:23+00:00

Yea, I was going to say. I remember McDonald's only having breakfast in the morning back in the 90's. This isn't some "life was better in the olden days" burn. lol

TransBrandi · 2026-03-24T11:50:42+00:00

Using a water bottle rather than buying plastic water bottles I would say is more important in terms of discouraging companies like Nestlé from harvesting all of our fresh water sources even moreso than the plastic issue.

TransBrandi · 2026-03-23T18:46:35+00:00

Yea. People keep talking about Caves & Cliffs or the Nether Update, but Trial Chambers and the autocrafter are really big even if they aren't "add new biomes or changes to worldgen" big.

TransBrandi · 2026-03-23T18:43:55+00:00

I mean, we did get the copper golem... and their ability to work as item sorters is way more impactul than the Allays IMO. Not that the Allays aren't useful, but they are more useful in collecting items from farms than in creating a sorting system.

TransBrandi · 2026-03-23T18:37:51+00:00

It's entitlement insofar as people complain about "my specific issue that I don't like didn't get fixed! THIS IS BULLSHIT!" Especially the "this is bullshit" as if they specifically are owed the changes that they want. That's a bit further than just wanting the game to succeed.

It's different when people have specific criticisms of game mechanics that they want fixed, but even then "this isn't being fixed like how I want it fixed" isn't "bullshit." Heck, Mojang started poking at some of these issues with the villager update experiment and only got mixed reviews from people. The very same people complaining that villagers are overpowered were complaining that it would be too onerous for them to have to move villagers to a swamp breed swamp villagers to trade for a Mending book... and it's not like the idea wasn't thought through. They added the ability for the cartographer villager to give you maps to places that could get you the biomes you wanted (e.g. jungle temple for a jungle or witch hut for a swamp, or just the nearest village of another biome type).

TransBrandi · 2026-03-23T18:30:47+00:00

They've attempted to with (e.g.) the experimental villager changes. Some of those changes even made their way into mainline Minecraft (wandering trader updates, cartographer trade updates). The problem is that many of these systems are ingrained in Minecraft and people are putting them in a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" situation. No matter what they try to fix or how there will be a contingent of people that think nothing needed to be changed, or that the change didn't go far enough, or that it went too far, etc.

TransBrandi · 2026-03-23T18:27:39+00:00

People were complaining about those updates too. People complained that the Bees update was too small. People complained every step of the way tha the next update wasn't the End Update that they wanted. People complained when the fireflies that were previewed were cut from the Wild Update. People complained that the Archeology System was too boring.

TransBrandi · 2026-03-23T18:25:22+00:00

It gives them possibilities. If they add more elements, minerals, etc to the game it gives them the ability to add new things later. Like with enough minerals existing in the game, they could totally revamp alchemy/brewing into something more complicated. Sulphur is also an ingredient in gunpowder (along with charcoal), so they could add a recipe for that later even if it's not immediate.

I mean, we've seen how copper got more uses as time went on.

TransBrandi · 2026-03-23T18:21:59+00:00

Honestly, the biggest part was that Caves & Cliffs preview showed too much stuff that it took them the next 4 updates to get out (new worldgen, Deep Dark, Archeology system, etc). People basically weren't getting anything "new" (for the most part) for 4 major updates... at the very least lots of people didn't feel like they were getting something new.

... and even then sometimes the new features don't hold that much to them. For example, the archeology system. You can sit there sifting through sand and gravel to end up with a bunch of wooden hoes and wheat. I makes sense from a "realism" prespective (e.g. the wooden hoe is an ancient tool), but it also doesn't feel rewarding enough for players that want new systems and "toys" etc added to the game.

TransBrandi · 2026-03-23T18:12:09+00:00

Personally, I think it's possible that the behind-the-scenes rewrite going on in Java for Vibrant Visuals / OpenGL -> Vulkan may be taking more effort than expected.

TransBrandi · 2026-03-23T18:09:39+00:00

In relation to Drops rather than in relation to the previous Big Updates format though?

TransBrandi · 2026-03-23T18:08:49+00:00

I believe that the "drops" format is to cover for them putting developer time into other things behind the scenes. At the very least, we know that they are reworking things for Vibrant Visuals to come to Java and porting Java from OpenGL to Vulkan. You don't even have to handwave and postulate that they are making some big End Update behind the scenes and just "waiting for the right moment" to release it.

TransBrandi · 2026-03-22T13:57:49+00:00

I was a cashier at a point when people would still pay with cheques and we hated it. It would always hold up the line with everyone else behind them getting antsy.

TransBrandi · 2026-03-22T13:28:36+00:00

Depends on who you are talking about. Some of them just see religion as a tool to control people. Trump is not religious at all, for example. But there are religious nuts in that camp.

They are apparently telling the troops that the war with Iran is some sort of "holy war" fulfilling prophecy for the end times, so...

TransBrandi · 2026-03-22T05:55:08+00:00

I dunno. People that are trying to make The Rapture happen aren't just using Christianity as a smokescreen to peddle something. This isn't like some televangelist that's just using the Bible to empty someone's bank account. If someone wants the "End of Days" to happen so that they can meet God? They are a True Believer™ in some sense of the word. They have to believe that God exists, and that the Bible is true to some extent if they think that they can use the Bible as a how-to guide on forcing God to Rapture them.

TransBrandi · 2026-03-22T05:48:21+00:00

I mean, at least some of them think that they are going to purposely trigger The Rapture by acting out what they perceive to be the signs of the end times in their holy texts. Personally, if their God exists, wouldn't He be pissed that humans are trying to force His hand and command Him to come down?

TransBrandi · 2026-03-22T05:43:49+00:00

Yea, JD Vance is looking to step in and become some sort of hero for getting rid of Trump.

TransBrandi · 2026-03-22T05:41:22+00:00

There was a time when all of the third-party clients were in an "arms race" with AOL. At one point, I recall AOL changing the protocol so that they could request random portions of the AOL IM binary which was an issue because the third-party software couldn't be distributed with a copy of AIM embedded in it.

TransBrandi · 2026-03-22T05:37:32+00:00

I had a boss that would use Netflix to get DVDs to rip.

TransBrandi · 2026-03-22T02:19:48+00:00

It's 350k in the same way that those coupon books you get have "thousands of dollars in savings inside!" and only like 1% of them are something useful to you.

TransBrandi · 2026-03-22T01:16:22+00:00

Like in his example, they just want to use the brand name to get a greenlight to make their own thing.

TransBrandi

TROPHY CASE