Banks was ahead of his time in so many ways. What an absolutely brilliant writer.

Jesus dude, you didn’t need to sweeten the deal, I was already for it!

After all, a broken clock is only ever accidentally correct, and never in a way that’s helpful.

Hard disagree on that one. I fucking love Dylan.

Running Up That Hill covered by Placebo.

The original is bland eighties pop. The cover is deeply unsettling in all the ways Placebo are so fucking good at.

I hate this, and I hate that it’s becoming the new normal everywhere.

“Yes, we’ve had one, but what about Second War?”

“I don’t think he knows about Second War, Pippin.”

Except the actual MMO depicted in SAO fucking sucks. Like, once you remove the whole “Oh my God it’s like I’m really there” hyper-advanced simsense VR aspect, it’s a really shitty game. The only possible builds are DPS and Tank, there’s no magic, no ranged, nothing to make stealth viable. You can go into crafting but that’s about it for any other skills. The whole “unique skill” mechanic is basically just pure “Fuck you” RNG and would be impossible to balance. Loot gets handed out based on last hits so fuck cooperation. It’s a mess. If you made an MMO with modern tech that perfectly recreated the mechanics of SAO, no one would play it.

This is the real trap of the Iran war. Trump either has to commit to a deeply unpopular invasion, or he has to be the first US president to openly defy AIPAC.

Reminder that it’s now public knowledge that the US had to warn Iran - through back channels - that Israel was going to attempt to assassinate their negotiators in a deliberate attempt to sabotage the peace process. It wasn’t a subtle attempt either; Israel sent jets into Iranian airspace to shoot down their plane.

Israel is openly working against the US’ interests. They’re basically an enemy nation at this point. And y’all want to hand them more resources and access to all your secrets. OK, sure, good luck with that.

Yeah, I’m trying to get better at that. More exercise, more stretching, more vegetables in my diet. It’s a process, but I’m starting to feel the difference.

Take a walk. Even if it’s just on a treadmill. Even if it’s just up and down the stairs a few times. There are empirical studies on this; the physical act of walking energizes your brain. Doesn’t have to be outside, doesn’t have to be going anywhere. Just walk. Five to ten minutes, put a podcast on or something. Do that every hour or two.

Honestly, the only disadvantage is that you can start to feel your body breaking down.

Everything else just gets better. You’re wiser, smarter, more confident, less bothered, and you have fewer fucks to give.

And honestly, I look hotter now than I did in my twenties or thirties.

If only the world didn’t keep on getting worse every year.

Lemmy.ml in shambles.

Though many GOP senators warn against blowing up the filibuster and empowering a potential future Democratic-led Senate from more easily pushing through their priorities, others, like Trump ally Sen. Ron Johnson, argue that Democrats would nuke the filibuster on their own.

Oh to live in a world where the Dems have even half the guts that Republicans think they do.

I have no idea if that is the official policy

That’s OK. I do.

Like I said, you’re right, though the change was recent enough that I hadn’t been aware of it until I double checked.

You’re wrong about the reasons why the posture changed, but I really can’t get into that.

So, apparently you are actually correct, although the change in posture is much more recent than you think. As in, within the last few weeks to months.

I will not be saying more on this because I’ll get people in trouble if I do.

There are gaps, but those gaps can be fixed. There’s a reason Saab are getting so many orders for GlobalEye.

The issue is that everyone thinks computers operate on magic, so they just ignore the idea that there might be practical limitations on doing the things that they want to do.

In reality there is no means of age verification that isn’t also a form of identity verification. And if you asked people “Should everyone have to hand over their government ID to private companies in order to use the internet”, you’d see much lower numbers of positive responses.

Correct. Even with Operation Reassurance, which stations a sizeable contingent of NATO forces in all three states, the NATO assumption is that the Baltics will be largely overrun by any Russian attack before reinforcements can arrive. The strategic goals of the operation are a) to slow any Russian incursion down, and b) to ensure that an attack on any Baltic state would be a direct engagement with a large portion of NATO militaries, thus ensuring that it would constitute an article 5 trigger. As the name suggests, it’s more about reassurance - “We stand with these people and will fight to defend them” - than it is about actually stopping a Russian attack.

Edit: As of very recently this is no longer true. See below.