No but it’s got a demo for free

People who don’t want to use the epic store. That was me. I just don’t want another launcher, another account. I’ll get around to it at some point I’m sure but I didn’t buy AW2 and probably would have if it wasn’t an exclusive.

Not as great as it seems. The thing is, everyone’s retirement is tied to real-estate. The numbers my vary country by country, but nearly all pension funds and mutual funds have significant exposure to real-estate that is just ignoring the issue that those properties may become uninsurable. That’s before what happens due to the economic disruption of all those cities slowly, then at an increased velocity, relocating.

It’s not going to be pretty.

So yes, I realize this a joke map (honestly, a giant, probably mostly freshwater sea, in the US would be a blessing). But what you’re describing is the main issue with climate change.

It’s not going to be “the day after tomorrow”. It will be coastal cities… which are… like nearly ALL of them… losing all their economic value. In the US when having this conversation I say “what do you do when any building in Manhattan is uninsurable? What do you do when it’s sure to have severe damage?”.

For most people there are plenty of places to go, but the “going” is going to be very, very ugly.

Or just… Don’t make a launcher?

Man, late to this party but if you want a wild ride this guy’s got a few… Humans to elements. I realize the statement wasn’t looking for a response but if you actually want to know buckle up…

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ett_8wLJ87U

It gets even more complicated. Deer for instance, cause some property damage, sure but nothing like hogs obviously. HOWEVER, if there are to many, they’ll eat up all sorts of plants all winter that other animals and insects depend on in the spring. When state environmental authorities set bag limits, it’s not only to preserve a species, they’re also depending on hunters to remove a certain amount.

Snow geese were a huge problem for a while because they’d migrate far up north, and spend all summer picking apart vegetation on small islands. Vegititaiton that takes forever to grow up there, and was important to making sure some of those islands didn’t erode away… which they did. So near me while the daily bag limit for most birds was 2/day, for those snow geese it was like 25, with no limit on the season.

A good portion of what drives this are things like urban sprawl, etc, but there is no way to remove ourselves from the environment, which means we should do your best to maintain it. Most of these limits and programs are set by highly dedicated people who usually have advanced degrees in a field that pays very poorly. They do it because they care, so I tend to trust them.

I get hunting is unpalatable to a lot of people, but predation is an important part of how ecosystems balance. Left to their own devices these things certainly would stabilize, but the “new normal” may not be pleasant. Those plants excess deer population decimate over the winter may be important to an insect population, which is an important food source for a specific bird during it’s migration, that is important to balancing a beetle that decimates a specific tree species later in that birds migratory path or something. So that deer population becomes important to several other species and ecosystems across a broad range.

I’m not really qualified to talk about specifics, but it was really eye opening talking to an ornithologist friend of mine.

edit: another for instance on deer: When tag limits are placed, you usually get something like 2 bucks and maybe 8 does or something (depending on region, what the environmental authority saw doing surveys etc). This isn’t just to preserve bucks, it’s also that environmentally, it’s important to remove more does. Again my point being these hunting limits aren’t just permission to a hunt a species, but a request that a species is hunted.

I think that’s exactly the point though. “We didn’t mark it up to mark it down, the price is just the price”. As a chronic patient gamer part of me hates that (I love finding older classics for like $10) but I don’t mind shelling out for a good game. The biggest expense is my time, and if a bunch of years later the price hasn’t moved it’s probably worth my time.

oh yeah, I didn’t want to be dismissive of the mtx stuff. It’s absolutely predatory and awful, but I don’t think it fully stands in the way of developing good games.

Which is related to what you’re saying about indies going under even after success. Game development takes time, and you need money to underwrite that time. I just think there’s going to be a split; right now AAA studios are shitifying their games, turning them more into CandyCrush skinner boxes. But the demand for good games hasn’t gone away, there’s just less financial upside than making CandyCrush. My point is, even though it’s less money, there’s still a good amount of money to be had there. Eventually the gaps going to be filled. Microsoft cant fill it because on the balance sheet, things like COD and anything from King are where they should be focused. And it sucks right now because they sucked up a stupid amount of talent and thanos snapped them, but thats not a sustainable practice.

But yes, it’s going to be painful. It’ll suck seeing really nifty indie stuff have to struggle so hard. Like I said I’m also going to miss the polish that comes with AA stuff. I’m going to miss the hell out of Arkane. Their games weren’t perfect, but they had so much soul. They didn’t deserve to have Redfall be their epitaph.

Oh I’m well aware lol. The game is a godamn miracle. But thats the thing, Bethesda has been on this trajectory for a good lonnnnnng while. Like the whole “obsidian good bethesda bad” thing isn’t quite right, but what is true is Bethesda has been incredibly strategic about shittifying their games: there’s always just enough there to keep you going “ok… one more”.

Starfield is the first one I just didn’t even bother with.

FO4 is why I waited and ultimately didn’t buy starfield. I LOVED elderscrolls, and FO:NV is like my alltime favorite. I didn’t hate FO4, there’s some fun to be had, but you can see pretty clearly from it where FO:76 came from. From what I’ve seen and read, I’m not missing anything with starfield.

NMS is tough. They did an amazing job trying to salvage it, but it will always be a game that was never meant to be that big. It’s not bad but at somepoint in the loop you just go “wtf am I doing?”. I give that team all the credit in the world, but that game never belonged where it is.

Eh, skill up had a great take on this. The thing is it’s wayyyyy easier to be a small indie developer than it ever was before. Making a game (or any art) still isn’t easy, it never was and never will be, but it’s viable without a giant publisher in a way it just hasn’t been before.

Its the AA titles that are on the most precarious footing, but I bet even those do ok. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy some AAA stuff time to time, I’ve got a stupid amount of hours in overwatch, but I’ve never once paid for a skin because… why would you?

The thing that’s going to suck is losing the studios like Arkane. Their games weren’t perfect but they were freaking cool, and they basically always got the raw end of the deal. Even Prey(2016), their masterpiece, is the product of corporate bullshitiery they had nothing to do with. So we’re probably going to miss studios like that for a while (as they get re-tasked to fortnite/cod support teams) but “indie” stuff has already been stepping up to fill that void, and is less indie all the time.

Look at Dave the Diver. That’s not exactly an indie studio. They had resources. There’s going to be a gap for a bit, but there’s still a demand for good games and art. Those AA breakthroughs are what people want. Again, I continue to spend dumb amounts of time on overwatch, but it’s not where I spend my money. Microsoft hovelled themselves by buying all these studios and not taking the leap with supporting them. Distribution just doesn’t have the value it once did. So if microsoft wants to become CandyCrush, feeding an addiction loop to grab the whales, sure, whatever, but there’s plenty of bread out there for studios doing other stuff.

Yeah sorry! I had deleted it I didn’t see where you mentioned it was a pitcher and thought you meant vft!

Agreed, and I spent like a decade in protein engineering and pre-biotic chemistry.

And if someone really wants to be a pedant about it, go ahead and prove conscious “intent” is inherently different than, not just a more complex form of, what’s going on here. If someone’s managed to solve all of the philosophy around consciousness, self, and intent, they could really save us all a bunch a time! Until then, pedantically, you’re not wrong to say the plant “knows” to do this as much as I “know” to pay my rent; it’s all just chemical reactions based on environment.

… Or we could allow people to enjoy the pressures and reasons that give rise to the subtle aspects of organism in this complex ecosystem we call earth without being a dick about it, and trust that the level of language specificity will increase/decrease commiserate to the degree of precision the topic requires.

not only native, but the ONLY place. I’ve got carnivores from every continent (accept Antarctica, obviously), and thats STILL my favorite fact.

It does make sense they’re so rare though. Most carnivory you can picture the evolutionary path: Something had a mutation that kind of made a cup, something had a mutation that kind of made the leaves sticky… etc. You can see it happening one step at a time with minor advantages (and therefore survival) at each step, until they kept compounding into more and more complex and specialized structures.

For a VFT… multiple things had to happen at once. There’s no advantage to the motion until you can also digest and adsorb the material. There’s also no advantage to a partial motion that can’t trap an organism. It’s really wild they exist!

We’re used to getting our energy and building blocks from our food. Plants get their energy from the sun, and their building blocks from the air (CO2). They get water and some minerals, but a plant is made up off solidified air. It’s like if you could be solar powered living off just air, water, and an occasional multi-vitamin.

Anyway, carnivores don’t really get energy from their prey, just the nutrients. It’s like self fertilizing.

Victory bell is probably based off of highland pitchers (Nepenthes). Fun fact: In some parts of the world they’re called “monkey cups”. I don’t know if the monkeys actually drink out of them or not but that’s where the name came from lol.

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I did really like this, but it is a bit generic.

The audio book is fantastically done and it’s written well enough. Characters are fleshed out and interesting, the universe makes sense.

Again: I really enjoyed it I just don’t think it really put anything new on the table.

Edit: wanted expand on both the good and bad, no spoilers.

The plot is nifty enough but you could guess it from start to finish with like 2 cues (and you get those pretty early). There’s really nothing challenging there we haven’t seen before.

That being it said plays out well. The “big” plot elements you’ll see coming but the little things and character reactions are why I say it’s well written. I may have seen this movie a bunch but I liked watching these characters do it.

So most fungi do have a lifespan, they have teleomere decay, and when you’re cloning mushrooms (from propagating mycelia) you have to let them go to fruit (the part that looks like a mushroom) every now and then. It’s a pain in the ass.

But like the other poster said, they play it fast and loose with which part you consider the “organism”. My favorite thing is that they do cytosolic streaming. Genetics can be a pain on mushrooms because not only do they share nutrients and metabolic burden through mycelia, they can share nuclei.

One of the weird convienent realities we used extensively is that cells are big enough you can spread them over a petri dish with a little loop, and if you diluted the initial sample enough, the colonies that developed were, practically speaking, from one parent cell. So you could try to modify a bunch, and then plate them (spreading the cells around) and pick individual colonies that were all clones from a single parent. Fungi mycelia means the nucleus isn’t stuck in one cell. It also means expression levels can be variable (some cells will have multiple nuclei, and then later maybe they don’t).

Fungi are a godamn pain in the ass to study. They’re not mysterious, they’re not alien, they’re just fucking assholes.