If it’s not for you it’s not for you, but I will say the Persona series took a big turn for the better around Persona 3. The modern ones don’t have a whole lot in common with the first couple beyond some basic play structure. If the last one you played was on the PS1 and you’re at all interested in an anime JRPG then P5 is worth a second look.

The electricity grid, on the other hand, already exists

…largely in the same appalling, copper-line state it has been in since its original installation 100 years ago. Which is woefully and catastrophically unprepared for an America full of EV drivers.

Not disagreeing with your core point, but just saying. The American electrical backbone system is absolutely in no way prepared for a mass shift to electric vehicles at this time. We’re getting there, and if EV adoption continues at its current pace we run a pretty good chance of being fine so long as proper upgrades are actually being made, but we’re not there yet and demand for EVs absolutely could still outpace the ability of our electrical infrastructure to support them.

And last year you could have also said “nobody is going to threaten nuclear escalation with all of NATO at once” and I’d have believed it, but look where we are

You should take a read into some Gnosticism. You’d be interested in what they have to say regarding the Demiurge.

Thanks I hate this, but you’re absolutely right.

First one, then the other, and that’s why Kroger is getting their asses sued off by the FTC under Biden appointee Lina Khan. The avian flu issue was a legitimate supply/demand squeeze for a little while, until it wasn’t, and Kroger didn’t back down an inch, so the FTC is stepping in.

Makes me wonder what will happen on Jan 6, 2025 if the shutdown continues - who pays for the National Guard folks, Capitol police officers, and so on?

This is a really big, serious problem that I didn’t even think about at first. Holy shit. Dollars to donuts this was a major consideration in the timing.

It’s just The Game all over again. When you’re reminded about it once a year, you facepalm and take it in stride. When somebody reminds you of it every 45 minutes, it gets real old real fast.

And “the American experiment” took place in a world that didn’t contain mass surveillance systems, automatic firearms, remote control attack drones, EMPs, radar trackers, and god knows what other military secrets that can be brought to bear. A second American revolution is guaranteed to be extremely bloody, has a much lower chance of success than the first one, and nobody wants to be on the first wave of it.

Besides, the stakes are different now. The American Revolution succeeded largely on the back of the fact that the rebels in question were all the way across the ocean and not taking land from Britain directly. That’s no longer an option.

I see the point you’re trying to make here but you’re ignoring an awful lot of context both for the original American Revolution and also for the modern day.

Don’t worry, the wiki nerds have been keeping a list.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_or_misleading_statements_by_Donald_Trump

Nah. Might end up with driver soup by the end of it but no need to yank all the parts. Custom builds work just fine with a little TLC.

Ukraine is going to invent psykers in 2031 when NATO runs out of missiles

That honor goes to Demon’s Souls…

Okay, so, I agree with you in spirit, but this sounds like you’re attempting to legislate that social media companies are not allowed to pursue user engagement of their product. Basically telling them that they’re not allowed to seek profit. I don’t actually know how you go about drafting a law that describes this correctly, or how you actually enforce it after it’s in place. Basically every move these companies make would then have to be subject to scrutiny by a court of investigators to see if it falls outside of legal boundaries or not, and said court is statistically likely to be chock full of people that have less than zero idea of what they are actually looking at.

That particular genie is out of the bottle and I don’t know how we put it back in short of banning social media and/or advertising altogether, which is basically a non starter, that’s not realistically going to happen. I do support this goal but we need to cook this a little more to get an actual solution and not a leaky band-aid.

Wow, okay, fair enough. Edited the prior comment to reflect this. Thanks for teaching me something I should have looked up first.

Depends how you define a shape. I don’t think it’s a polygon because it doesn’t have straight lines. Technically a circle also isn’t a polygon by the same rules, but circles have their own special little clubhouse. Sure is a shape though. I think this… thing is also a shape. Just not a useful one.

I knew him from Lonely Island before I ever saw any of his SNL stuff or B99, so for me it’s like seeing Weird Al become a successful screen actor. I like Andy so it makes me smile.

The blind text transcriptions are becoming a second layer of meta-meme within the meme itself

Since everyone seem pretty rightly upset about the “y’all’d’ve’ff’ve” I instead present to you another Southernism that makes more sense and is actually in active use.

Y’all’d’n’t’ve

“Y’all’d’n’t’ve done that if’n ya knew what the consequences were gonna be.”

Oh they’ll keep producing just fine. But when demand suddenly drops to half or less of what it was, they’re going to run into trouble, and fast. America imports an absolutely ludicrous amount of oil for many purposes. If the country collapses, that supply/demand chain dries up.

Realistically, all the American Mega-Barons that are doing all this oil business will just set up shop in another country. Africa, maybe - plenty of open space and not much regulation out there. But that will take time and investment, time that existing oil supply barons may not have.

They’d probably survive, but I have a hard time seeing all of the Middle East just quietly watching America burn down when we account for probably a solid half of their budget sheets in their most profitable sector.