Weapon degradation seems to be a serious and genuine complaint that a lot of people have with BotW and TotK but for some reason it never seemed to bother me as it has others. I totally understand the criticism but frankly I always had a full stock of good quality weapons - particularly with the Fuse function in TotK - and never ran low or out of decent weapons on hand.

I think they were implemented to try to force gamers to think about other options to take down enemies rather than brute-forcing every battle which appeals to me, but it seems to have angered a significant proportion of people. From my perspective, it helps to engender the puzzler aspect of Zelda games in a novel way - viewing battles as a puzzle to be solved for maximum efficiency rather than how well you can strike and dodge.

Thank you for that clarification; I was genuinely wondering why anything smaller than 2.5 millimetres would pass through an air filter! When it comes to filtering air, 2.5 millimetres is MASSIVE

To be clear, he wasn’t found guilty because it wasn’t a criminal trial. The judge ruled, on the balance of probabilities that it was more likely that he raped Carroll than he didn’t. That’s a different bar than for criminal trials which require that it is beyond a reasonable doubt that he raped Carroll.

Now my personal opinion is that he absolutely raped her beyond a reasonable doubt, and that he has definitely raped others on numerous occasions, but sadly those aren’t legal facts as he hasn’t been found guilty of them by a criminal trial jury or judge.

I don’t think that nobody will care, but I think the point you’re trying to make is that his supporters won’t care. That we can definitely agree upon.

I know exactly what you mean. When I (cis man) was freshly 18 in the 00’s I was indecently assaulted by an older woman in a bar when I walked past her and her group of friends and I never reported it. I have friends who experienced similar who never reported it either. When I told my friends that night what had just happened I was told I was lucky to be non-consensually grabbed by a woman. I tried to tell myself that was the case for a long time; it took many years before I came to realise that I was assaulted and, by that point, there was nothing I could do about it.

Not sure how it works in USA but can’t you elect to not have your employer withhold your taxes for you and then have to pay your annual tax in a lump sum at the end of the fiscal year? That’s part of standard HR taxation forms here in Australia and some people do it in order to invest what they would otherwise be paying in taxes then divest at tax time, pay their tax, and hold onto the capital gains from their investment that they’d otherwise not have had access to. Sure they pay capital gains tax on that but it’s still a net windfall if their investments accrue.

Musk is a piece of shit nazi whose public opinions are actively harming his companies, but let’s not get all puritanical about the use of drugs. Plenty of people use the drugs you’ve listed (and many more) and aren’t hateful fuckwads.

Coal is dying as an investment but existing coal plants will likely run for a long while.

I think that might vary from place to place.

Here in Australia our most recent new coal-fired power plant was built in 2009 and very many big ones we rely heavily on are already past their original planned lives. We’re lucky to have such good solar generation here though that even residential rooftop solar is kicking some serious goals but have been leaning more on gas for base load distribution (trust me, we’re not gonna meet our targets). Coal isn’t gonna last too much longer here, but we’re not gonna be carbon neutral for a VERY, very long time.

Essentially, yeah! There were three driving modes - kart, hovercraft, and plane. Some tracks only allowed certain driving modes and you would pick your driving mode before the race started. It was pretty novel for the era!

I’m surprised no one has mentioned The Brak Show! That was definitely one of my favourites back in the day.

Diddy Kong Racing was the best racing game of this era and yes, I am most definitely willing to die on this hill.

The Israeli government didn’t, but the Israeli population did. The strongest argument the public was making against the war was to bring the hostages home. Now that they’ve got that they have a much larger domestic social licence to continue the genocide. It was a real ‘rock and a hard place’ decision for Hamas given that Trump began alluding to the idea that the US would directly enter the war somehow if they didn’t agree to the plan.

The important part is that the protests are carrying weight with other people who care. The protests have been getting bigger and bigger, and when someone who cares about the cause but doesn’t show up sees this it gives them more imperative to show up too next time. The larger the protests get, the more likely that it will lead to a general strike, which is what will make a very big difference. Once the billionaires and centimillionaires genuinely feel like their profits are being threatened, they’ll pull the administration’s strings.

I’m not saying all religious people are dangerous, just those who ask how someone can have a moral compass without religion. In order to ask that question genuinely they have to believe that they, without their religious rules, would have no qualms with harming others for their own gain.

People who ask that question are really telling on themselves; they’re saying that without religion they would have no qualms stealing, murdering, and raping. They’re very dangerous people.

Yeah South Australia has done some amazingly progressive things. They were the first jurisdiction in the world to give women the right to vote AND run for parliament in 1894 and when Australia voted No on creating a federal Indigenous Voice to Parliament, they were the first state to set up their own state-based Voice of elected Aboriginal peoples.

Some other progressive firsts:

They were the first Australian colony to accept legal testimony from Aboriginal peoples in 1844; the first part of the British Empire to cut links between church and state in 1851; the first Australian state to give Aboriginal men the right to vote in 1856; the first part of the British Empire to legalise trade unions in 1876; the first Australian state to decriminalise homosexuality in 1975; and the first Australian state to make age-based discrimination illegal in 1991.

I, too, find it really odd that Turning Point has found a hold there. They’ve typically been quite progressive - even their Liberal governments are usually far more progressive than the Libs around the rest of the country.

And this is why fascism is inherently untenable in the long term - it becomes an ouroboros. It’s always a short-lived political philosophy as the reins keep getting tightened on who qualifies for the in-group until, eventually, those who supported it become part of the out-groups.

Trump is a lot like the Christian bible. They both say so many different and oftentimes contradictory things so everyone can just focus on the parts they like and disregard the ones they don’t, all while claiming to be true to the source. They’re both followed zealously, often with the most zealous being the least knowledgeable about everything that’s been said. They both inspire violence against others in their followers. They’re both worshipped as infallible by large swathes of people. There are actually more similarities than I thought.

I’ve been saying for a while that the USA needs to disband and form (at least) three new Unions - a West Coast Union; a Northeast Union; and a Midwest/South Union(s). Take away all of the safety nets that red states get from the federal government supplemented by blue states and they’ll descend into utter chaos in a matter of months. That’s the only way that red state constituents will have a chance of realising how much they benefit from the federal government they so often rail against.

You want states’ rights? Secede and see how long you last.

His records were among some of the first I ever owned (inherited from my father) and it really hurt to destroy them when we all found out about who he actually is. It really felt like I was destroying a part of my childhood. Had to be done though.