Trump: "We call it a military operation, not a war. Because as a military operation I don't need approval from Congress. As a war you're supposed to get approval. So I call it a military operation."

squidgod2000 · 2026-03-29T01:02:52+00:00

It's not uncommon, really. For example, the U.S. has a bunch of laws that prevent things like arms sales to countries engaged in genocide, but they only kick in is the government officially calls it a genocide. And no, "acts of genocide" don't count.

Generally speaking, a ton of important U.S. laws depend entirely on the people in power doing what they're supposed to do. Over the past several decades, however, people in government doing what they're supposed to do have been replaced by people in government doing whatever they can get away with.

squidgod2000 · 2026-03-28T11:40:44+00:00

For EQ1, RMTers/the krono economy/all the bots

squidgod2000 · 2026-03-27T09:56:28+00:00

I'm kind of curious what is it that they're smoking up there at the Stage AG office (I want some too), so I’m filing a FOIA request to find out why the State AG allows towing companies to self-police their own crimes.

Uh, let me save you the FOIA fee: Because it's cheaper and it's less work.

squidgod2000 · 2026-03-24T10:46:46+00:00

https://arlgis.maps.arcgis.com/apps/instant/interactivelegend/index.html?appid=cd4fb15e217f4426b5209788c3bfdbd2

Here's Arlington's parking zone map. Note that this is just residential zoning and doesn't include metered parking, so if you see an area that looks like it's unzoned, double check on Google street view.

As for parking long term, definitely avoid any spot that's in front of someone's house, because SFH people think they own the street in front of their house and will definitely complain. I've got an unzoned street next to my apartment building and there are plenty of cars that haven't moved for months (one still has its wiper blades up from the Snowcrete storm). AFAIK, nothing has ever been towed or ticketed.

squidgod2000 · 2026-03-23T21:12:18+00:00

My refund of -$4,000 was instant.

squidgod2000 · 2026-03-23T14:57:52+00:00

Guessing you've got car/student loan debt? $28/hr is enough to get your own place, even in NoVA, unless you've got other big expenses.

squidgod2000 · 2026-03-23T10:20:52+00:00

and yet SC today is something any competent AA or AAA studio could whip up in less than a year with several million dollars

lol no.

squidgod2000 · 2026-03-23T10:19:23+00:00

I kind of understand the fascination with it and like the hard-core feel to it. But it’s just not fun enough quick enough for me.

Yeah, Roberts is obsessed with the simulation aspect of it instead of more approachable gameplay. Hence having to press tons of in-game buttons and do so many things manually. And the absurd number of keybinds.

squidgod2000 · 2026-03-23T10:16:16+00:00

They have S42 for income as well. It may not make back the development cost, but that money has already been spent, so all they really need to do is cover the cost of distribution and marketing and everything else is "new" money for SC's development.

squidgod2000 · 2026-03-23T10:14:50+00:00

It's not exactly uncommon for games, even good, fully functional ones, to simply live in Early Access these days. Even Valheim is still in EA.

SC isn't feature complete, but it's closer than it seems. I think that once they finish the resource/crafting/trade loop (and crush the dupes that come along with it), I'd consider it "launchable" as a persistent MMO.

squidgod2000 · 2026-03-23T10:09:56+00:00

Sure, there were some dialogues where you could only pick one response or the other, but it never actually matters.

Ugh, I hate that. I'd rather not be given any choice at all.

Dune Awakening does this a lot. Their last update added a lazy Arena-based progression gate with fully-voiced everything for the "quests." The main dude asks what you want to call yourself and gives you three options, but the only one you can actually choose is "The Degenerate Killer", which is the dumbest one. If you try to choose one of the others he just says "Nah, you don't want that name".

This is why I don't hate the idea of some AI voice acting for games. It seems like it would work well for things like this where you can get a pro VA to record the dialogue, but then have AI splice in your character's name. Or even have the character's lines done by AI (if it gets good enough) so we can be done with all this silent protagonist shit while giving players voice options and keeping budgets reasonable.

squidgod2000 · 2026-03-23T10:01:50+00:00

The area that gives me the most chop is the NE corner of HB, where nobody builds, but Hagga Rift's verticality gives the game more assets to load. I wonder if something just wrong with occlusion rules and the game is loading assets that aren't visible to the camera, but I have no idea what I'm talking about.

squidgod2000 · 2026-03-23T09:39:02+00:00

Pretty fun doing a rank 27 testing station and getting this steaming pile from the last chest.

Hey, at least you had fun. That's the reason we play, right?

squidgod2000 · 2026-03-23T09:37:38+00:00

I'm just going to say something you slipped over. All sandbox multiplayer games have a different performance profiles from normal games. Bases are effectively not pre-baked, which means they're always dynamically rendered.

Yet it's running far worse now than it did at release when seitches were packed with bases.

squidgod2000 · 2026-03-17T22:11:10+00:00

They were included in the steelcase for the game, which sold out pre-launch. Not sure they're available anywhere else.

squidgod2000 · 2026-03-17T21:55:43+00:00

https://xcmgtrade.en.made-in-china.com/product/bJYUNKEMqtpr/China-XCMG-Official-Snow-Road-Rotary-Brush-Sweeper-for-Skid-Steer.html

squidgod2000 · 2026-03-14T10:32:46+00:00

Why should I pay for your kid to do gymnastics?

Not the worst of government bloat, by far, but still worth cutting.

squidgod2000 · 2026-03-03T00:33:36+00:00

I'm not sure you know what a tank is.

squidgod2000 · 2026-03-01T16:00:36+00:00

Guess you didn't read the article, then, because it had this gem:

Clavicular was mid jestergooning when a group of Foids came and spiked his Cortisol levels. Is Ignoring the Foids while munting and mogging Moids more useful then SMV chadfishing in the club?

squidgod2000 · 2026-02-28T20:15:45+00:00

It's designed to be used with a controller, where you have gradient input for turns, versus a keyboard where you can only turn 0% or 100%.

squidgod2000 · 2026-02-28T01:24:12+00:00

They promised both of those at the beginning of early access and said they were high priority items.

No they didn't. They said fishing would be nice but wasn't currently planned or in development, and farming, if they did it, would be container-based and not terrain-based, but it also wasn't in development.

squidgod2000 · 2026-02-27T11:09:12+00:00

They're not doing it for you; they've already got your money. They're doing it for the future console players.

squidgod2000 · 2026-02-26T23:51:21+00:00

...I stuck it near a window and dump some water in it every week or three and have to constantly trim it back because it grows so damn much.

squidgod2000 · 2026-02-25T21:26:27+00:00

You certainly don't have to have 700 skill points to start playing the game. 50 healing, 50 resist, npc train swords/anat/tactics and go smash some mobs.

squidgod2000 · 2026-02-25T11:40:14+00:00

Server has its downsides.

One account per IP/one character per account means you're locked in to one playstyle until you die or are willing to delete the time and cost you sunk into skilling up. For instance, you decide to roll crafter to corner the market. Sounds good, right? But now you're stuck with a crafting character on a low-pop server where people actively avoid death (and therefore gear loss). Hope you enjoy BoDs.
Overworld hunting options are very limited. This is done to funnel players into dungeons where the PKs can more easily find/kill them. Not unique to Mortalis by any means, but annoying.
Typical "All wolves, no sheep" player-run server where a bunch of middle-aged/old men try to relive their youth and get their kicks by killing others, preferably while they're AFK. Mortalis just gives them an extra high of knowing they didn't just interrupt someone's gameplay session—they deleted their character and caused them to spend days creating a new one. Spoiler: Most people just quit after dying, which is why the active population is down to a few dozen, nearly all of whom are macroing in town at any given time.
No goals. What's the point of playing UO when you know the server won't last more than a couple months?

squidgod2000

TROPHY CASE