One time we had to pick up medicine for my wife’s cat at the human pharmacy, and the pharmacist confirmed with us that the patient’s name was “Sasha Feline”, because that’s what she saw in the system. But she pronounced it “fuh-leen”, like it was a person’s name. I don’t think she knew it was for a cat.
That became Sasha’s middle name after that.
I’m bigger than my cat. Stronger than him. Smarter than him. But giving him a pill is a test of sheer willpower, and in that I am completely outmatched.
It’s like every cell in his body is repurposed into a perfect machine, the singular goal of which is not taking a pill. He becomes liquid when I try to hold him down, then instantly transforms into a spring-loaded pill shooter once I get his mouth open. One time, through incredible effort, I managed to do it without losing any blood. I watched the pill go down his throat. The next day I found it caked in his neck fluff, as though his body detected its presence and morphed around it, rejecting it at a cellular level.
He doesn’t need a lot of pills, but after years of blissful cat ownership punctuated by epic, disastrous pill-giving, the vet finally revealed that he could take liquid medicine from a little dropper. So that’s much better.
She’s #4 all time on there! I took this better picture this week but hadn’t posted it yet because it’s “babie week” there.
When I got a lawn, I didn’t do anything to it. It gets mowed every two weeks, but that’s it. After a particularly nasty drought most of the grass died. A few months later, clover started popping up on its own. It’s much better than grass, and now a bunny likes to visit us.
bowel of popcorn
I can’t make a joke in good taste, so I’ll just point it out.
It’s semantics, which means it doesn’t matter. If a tomato had feelings, and referring to it as a vegetable hurt those feelings, then you’d be wrong to call it a vegetable, even indirectly.
Considering Microsoft continues to layoff developers, I think we can safely rule that out as a possibility.
It’s possible that in this specific instance Microsoft would not spend the extra money wisely. But for the industry as a whole, if the financials look better, fewer people will be laid off and companies will be willing to take more risks.
The second is the assumption that games are more expensive than ever to develop. This is beyond untrue; games have actually never been cheaper to develop.
Yes, indie games are cheaper to produce, which is why they cost less. The prevalence of mid-budget indie games strengthens my point: gamers have many options at many price points, and raising the cost of AAA games to $80 isn’t pricing anyone out.
In any case, we’re not talking about indie games. A big game like Baldur’s Gate 3 or Elden Ring costs $100M+ to make, which is a lot more expensive than it used to be.
Hot take, but $80 is a perfectly reasonable price for a “mainline” game.
Back in 1998, I saved all my money to buy Quest 64 for the suggested retail price of $60. That’s $120 in today’s money, and I guarantee you I didn’t get as much game as I will with Outer Worlds 2. Games dipped to $50 when they moved to discs, but even that was more expensive than today once you factor in inflation.
Realistically, an extra $10 isn’t pricing anyone out. All modern gaming platforms are expensive. There are still plenty of ways to enjoy gaming for cheap; they just don’t involve the newest platforms. That has been the case for most of the history of gaming.
Meanwhile games are more expensive than ever to develop. We want developers to get paid, and we want them to take more risks, but both of those things cost money.
I used to work at a DVD store, and sometimes we’d get a huge box with a single DVD at the bottom, and a ton of those plastic bags full of air to cushion it. When one of those packages arrived, I’d loudly announce, “Thank god! Our air arrived!” Then I’d tear it open and we’d all gasp like we’d been holding our breaths waiting for it.
It was Houston, so if we’re sticking with native fauna, it was either an alligator or some kind of venomous snake.
Personally I always pictured a manticore, but I never did get up there to see.
I lived on the ground floor of an apartment building that was lousy with millipedes. As pests go, millipedes are easy mode. They’re slow, they’re terrible climbers, and they crumble instead of squish. There’s a smell, but it’s not even that bad.
Occasionally there’d be a cockroach.
Then I moved to the second floor, and there were almost no millipedes, but more cockroaches. Also flying cockroaches.
It was like a video game. You’ve got your easy level 1 bugs with the occasional level 2 bug mixed in, then once you get to actual level 2, some of the level 2 bugs can fly.
Still not as bad as the third floor. The third floor was bats.
Ugh.
Listen to Marjorie Taylor Greene talk, and she’s easily the worst of the worst. But sometimes she does something like this or speaks out against Trump, and in that respect she may actually be one of the better Republicans, which is an extremely, extremely low bar to clear.
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I guess no point in climbing Mount Everest if it’s not going to be the tallest in 250M years. That’s a relief.
Depends on whether or not there’s a Gogoat or a Skiddo in the team.
If there isn’t, then not much.
That made me look it up, and it turns out goat sucker birds predate the chupacabra by a couple thousand years. There was a myth that these birds drank goat milk (from the goat).
I remember reading the Dragonlance books in the 90s, and one character would talk about a cryptid called the “Goatsucker Bird” that was an amalgamation of those two things, and now I finally get that joke.
I’d take Diddy Kong over any version of Mario Kart, any day. It’s less random, with more streamlined items and tighter mechanics.
If you haven’t played Anthem, you missed out.
It has some of the tightest gameplay I’ve ever experienced. Combat was satisfying. Traversal was a joy.
I’ll never understand how people could throw that away just because the endgame wasn’t there yet. The gameplay is the hardest part to get right!
You also don’t have to cobble your own shoes or darn your only pair of socks.
It isn’t a serious perspective to say that medieval peasants had it better than anyone in a first world country today.