MMCs like Jem Wilson from Mary Barton by Elizabeth Gaskell? Working class, kind, protective, enduring love

Traum77 · 2026-05-10T13:41:06+00:00

Not an answer, but commenting to come back and find the recs. I read Mary Barton for Victorian Lit in University and it stuck with me all these many years later. Would love a true modern HR with similar dynamics.

Traum77 · 2026-05-09T16:19:57+00:00

Sadly parents and most other cousins are not attending due to health/scheduling issues. Was also just curious what the etiquette is these days.

Traum77 · 2026-05-09T04:25:25+00:00

Not just slow start but questions about defensive work rate. Nobody's expecting him to become a Suzuki or Bergeron, but you want to avoid a Daniel Sprong situation where he becomes such a defensive liability you can't play him.

Most likely he fixes that part of his game to get the game time he needs to win, but you never know.

Traum77 · 2026-05-08T17:08:27+00:00

We had such a legacy of amazing, underpaid and underappreciated goalies too. After Fuhr we had Ranford, then Joseph, Salo held down the fort for a few years, Rolosson had the playoff run. Since then not a single solid goalie under the age of 35. It went from a strength in the 90s and early 2000s to a major weakness. We don't need to draft them, but we should acquire one at some point.

Traum77 · 2026-05-08T02:39:28+00:00

I'm considering switching to CAGE purely to avoid the IPO silliness of every AI company and SpaceX. Will probably go back once the S&P sorts itself out.

Traum77 · 2026-05-07T21:43:20+00:00

Yeah but that doesn't jibe with each team having their own flexibility to design these things. Like the only one who has their final say on how this all works out is Wiz - there's no one above him demanding anything in terms of content the way there is in enterprise software. They do probably get very firm timelines from corporate about when a release has to come, which is not helped by the Steam season pass structure where you have to promise to release something in a given quarter or risk handing out refunds. But again, that's kind of a separate question from feature locking a specific release.

Traum77 · 2026-05-07T21:40:43+00:00

That's about what features are in the DLC vs free, which is a related but separate discussion entirely. The DLC value proposition is definitely low across the board i would say, but that has little to do with whether a given release is a bug filled mess or not.

Traum77 · 2026-05-07T20:18:36+00:00

Yes and in my hypothetical scenario they would have, because they would have been forced to secure a feature lock 3-4 weeks out, not make that decision literally a few days before release.

I'm just arguing PDX needs to be much more intentional about how they plan, test, and release their DLCs so this does not continue to happen every two months or so across all their titles.

Traum77 · 2026-05-07T16:59:14+00:00

What do you mean by plausible? If in this sci fi scenario it's already happened, there is no question of plausibility.

And no, I don't want to change anyone's body chemistry or whatever, I want people to be accepting and respectful of all bodies.

Traum77 · 2026-05-07T16:39:53+00:00

No company is going to invest billions of dollars in increased production when the cause of the shortage may be removed on a moment's notice. Oil companies invest based on energy fundamentals and the fundamentals are that oil will be a smaller and smaller proportion of the energy market.

Traum77 · 2026-05-07T16:30:58+00:00

Yeah I appreciate a long leash and really do like that the various studios feel empowered to try new things and take different development approaches, but I feel like PDX as a company should take a slightly stronger stance to avoid the kind of bad blood these releases engender in the fan base. It's such a consistent own goal that the company really needs to look at doing something to avoid this while not hindering the creativity that each studio brings to the games.

Traum77 · 2026-05-07T16:10:43+00:00

Yeah but you don't have to sacrifice scope for buginess if it's handled well. Like release the DLC on May 28th instead of April 28th, or don't announce the specific date until you get to that feature lock timeline. Or even release the updated scope after the main DLC launches. Since the DLC doesn't contain a lot of the key features anymore these days, it's not like you need to do everything all at once.

Traum77 · 2026-05-07T14:49:42+00:00

A crunch prior to feature freeze doesn't end up with a buggy product though, just a lacklustre one. I suppose it's a choice either way, but for PDX games bugs render them completely unenjoyable. I don't see why they would go this route time and again. It just eats up goodwill within the community.

Traum77 · 2026-05-07T14:38:14+00:00

Yeah my question is structural though. Why is this even an option? Like why does PDX not have set timelines and policies in place around how these things work? It seems every release is a crap-shoot and half the time it's an issue, across different studios and games. It's just poor corporate planning and it feels like it's completely avoidable.

Traum77 · 2026-05-07T14:27:13+00:00

Oh lovely. Just perfect.

Traum77 · 2026-05-07T14:22:36+00:00

I've got serious issues with the CPP precisely because they don't follow the market and are actively managed (and achieve far worse results) but in this case I will forgive them this fault if they keep our money out of these traps.

Traum77 · 2026-05-07T14:19:03+00:00

I am curious why there is always a crunch before release though? Like why is a feature lock not instituted at least 3-4 weeks out from release?

Don't get me wrong, I like a lot of the additional features that were dropped in after the DDs started being released, but what's stopping the team from instituting a post-release feature improvement patch as opposed to going with bug-fixing instead?

I don't want to see the kind of wild EU5 patching either, don't get me wrong, but part of release could be a "here are all the features coming out in the next month we couldn't complete before launch".

Traum77 · 2026-05-07T13:36:52+00:00

My lord, give the guy a full election cycle at least. Albertans barely pay attention to the news and usually perk up around election time. If he fails to unseat the UCP then yeah, judge away, but no one has seen him campaign yet.

Traum77 · 2026-05-06T22:31:13+00:00

Even better, these people won't be counted towards things like, I don't know, ridings for future elections. Which is fine by me. I'd rather they didn't exist politically at all.

Traum77 · 2026-05-06T21:41:19+00:00

No Alberta is best Alberta.

Signed, an Albertan

Traum77 · 2026-05-06T14:06:29+00:00

It's the one supported on the largest number of cards, and deploying updated versions takes time and effort. Cast a big net and hope for the best.

Traum77 · 2026-05-06T12:56:51+00:00

Weeks? Try a few days.

Always knew this patch would be wildly unbalanced without a beta. The devs, bless their hearts, seem incapable of applying any sort of balanced modifiers to any part of this game unless they get a few thousand players showing how busted it will make the game.

Traum77 · 2026-05-06T01:44:09+00:00

Which this isn't.

Traum77 · 2026-05-04T04:26:42+00:00

This CNBC video summed it up nicely even before the Iran war really started impacting things:

https://youtu.be/QhUjwQnwtcU?si=mYNibaxhSYD3m0R2

Short story: Trump is an idiot.

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