injurai

So that video of Mike in the article is a bit old now, still great. The actual article is a find read. But here is a new video interview him as well: https://www.gamereactor.eu/grtv/325383/Cyberpunk+2077+-+Mike+Pondsmith+Interview/

Looks like shadow efficiency has been improved. I wonder how many of these benefits would really contribute to Deadfire given Obs's unconventional use of the engine.

Mike Pondsmith is one of the coolest guys ever. I totally agree with his take on cyberpunk. I really hate what that genre has become. It's either this garish cyberpop "outrun" bastardization. Or it's this weird dreary, no fun, single political voice, warning of the future sort of story and tone. Imo, the best of Cyberpunk died in the late 90's. For games it probably culminated with Deus Ex, System Shock II, and Anachronox. Basically after 9/11 cyberpunk was dead. Since then it's all been rather disappointing. I liked DX:HR as a game, but it doesn't get to the heart of what cyberpunk is. Granted those games are supposed to be pre-cyberpunk as they are prequels. 2077 sounds like it's going to get back to the heart of the genre, and really properly bring it back into alignment. Instead of just a garish stereotype retro throwback, it seems to trying to do what the original pioneers but now integrated the past 20 years of development into their foundation.

In the Play Books app you should be able to navigate to your library (down at the bottom.)

I wonder if she has to pick up that subclass. I mean... of course I'm going to take it. Just curious. I guess this also means the other companions are likely getting their own unique subclass...? I think I'm safe to expect as much.

Yeah, I didn't really consider Planescape as sci-fi either... more like psychadelic fantasy. When I was younger I really liked that sort of hybrid all the magic all the tech all the time. Sort of post post everything fantastic world absurdum. But it just doesn't appeal to me as much these days, and I feel it's actually be quite a long time since we had a proper SciFi crpg.

Where be thy stream? edit: oooo PST... dammit. Guess I'll be checking out the archive.

Children certainly have rights that bar their parents from treating them in a variety of manors. They are still minors however. A parental guardians liberties supersedes a the dependents liberties is probably a better way of saying something similar. But that is sort of a modern tautology.

That was out in the open and they had similar platforms. And what that has to do with anything? It's not collusion if it's out in the open? Is the foreign power ok if the platform is similar? I'm confused People all around the globe endorsed Obama publicly when he ran for office. The accusations in relation to Russia go deeper. Involving funds, secrecy, mutual profiteering prospects through real-estate policy, throwing FUD with respect to Clinton. As much as I dislike Farage, I don't see how him speaking at a rally is colluding. "It's not collusion if it's out in the open?" -- I don't normally throw dictionary definitions at people but I guess this is when one would do so. col·lude verb gerund or present participle: colluding come to a secret understanding for a harmful purpose; conspire. "university leaders colluded in price-rigging"

Hard Science Fiction: None of that whacked out Numenera stuff, or super high fantasy Star Wars / Mass Effect stuff. But also not military grit which is what most hard sci-fi ends up being. I really want Cowboy Bebop; Not the brand but the approach. Keep things just in our solar system and maybe the nearest habitable solar system. I want that quality of feeling small in a much larger world.

That was out in the open and they had similar platforms.

Damn, that movie feels forever ago. How did they revive that film into something...

I enjoyed the promo shots, that's enough for me.

I'll probably watch that this weekend. I love both The Host and Snowpiercer. Btw I heard Snowpiercer is getting a TV series or something...?

Where does China get it's own money? Do they print there own currency too? We can't be the only nation that just prints money. You typically don't want to print too much because you devalue your own currency. I see a lot of stuff about how all money is backed on the US dollar and the USD is floating. But Aren't they actually all relatively floating compared to each other? I know some are directly based on the USD but I seem to find it hard to believe that China's currency would be.

Is there any long term investigations or studies into what the United States debt owned by China will eventually lead to? It's not like China will start exporting their industry back to us. They are looking to Africa to pass the manufacturing buck to. If automation hits wide scale and rolls out first in the US we could presumably start raising taxes on US corporations and start paying down the deficit without increasing taxes on the people. But I very much doubt that will be the case.

Ooo Ogres, nice. I think we're gunna need a bigger boat.

I'd rather decades old medicine be affordable so people can stop being hit by surprise, instead of used as a way to earn passive income on IPs. It's the same issue with ticket quotas that our police departments have. Stop trying to sell x-amount of medicine to make y-amount of budgetary spending. What I'd really like to see a nationalized research budget to fund the sciences. Keep the manufacturing end a competitive at will market. Thing is these corporations want to achieve unilateral control over the whole industry and bring R&D into themselves. I'd rather two markets. A competitive R&D market competing for national funding, and an applied industry that seeks to bring down prices.

The problem there is that we blow our taxes on establishing national and global security, while other nations don't have those spending concerns. Never mind we never actually recovered from 2008.

Perhaps I'm mistaken in saying feudalism. Because I don't mean it in the sense of European medival feudalisms, I mean in terms of Japan. It's very different when you dig down and look at the long chain of economic policies and reforms. Japan as a somewhat isolated nation with that unified late as cultural influence from outside began to set in ~400-600 CE. It's development as a frontier nation bears a lot of similarities to America. Just in the same way as once land was all divided, how the immediate halt of boom lead to new dynamics. It's not just those similarities but how they propagate out over centuries. Japan looked more like the Napoleonic era up until it reached the Sengoku period. Returning somewhat to form afterwards in the reunification. But this is all just draping to contextualize my contrast with these elements honestly being mixed up in the US system and seemingly coming ever more into the forefront. So what, if companies insurance policy is merely collective bargaining? I'm not say that's bad. I am saying being part of a larger organization is a massive security blanket. People land those positions from working hard, and certainly have a good foot to start out on.

I honestly think America is more or less a feudal system. Especially the way healthcare and benefits are largely due to being associated with a company. Honestly it looks remarkably similar to japan in the late Nanboku-chō period. So basically pre-feudal. The only real distinction being the rise of the samurai class, which would be our police force more or less. #SamuraiLivesMatter amiright? Yeah... see what I mean? Totally pre-feudal, more so than any of the claims that we are an oligarchy.

So that is certainly fan art. https://twitter.com/DashStarWars/status/877337781449539585 The artist: https://twitter.com/mowseler Bit I swear it's a recreation of real art that was used for Kotor 2. Or it's based of some older fan art. Or this is the very original thing I saw all those years ago. But to me it looks like the artist dressed up and made a digital work of art inspired by the key art. You can see her rendition of Pallegina in the back too. Original Link: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DCzuDaiUMAAenEy.jpg Here's her twitter banner. Original Link: https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_banners/1669155907/1496042561/1500x500

I'm probably just at the very beginning of this stage. I love my friends but it certainly seems we have started to exhaust our shared passions.

The ol' talk that even capitalism is only perfect on paper. But at least if actually functions in some degree as a decentralized hierarchy. One that you can advance in over time. One that benefits from economic mobility and can shift labor around. Communism requires strong centralization and misses it's opportunity to act in the economic sphere, to disastrous effect. I also don't think people say capitalism and mean a pure system. Not for a long time at least, even predating communism. Communism by it's very nature wants to be better than a hybridized system and it needs a strong arm to pull it off. Otherwise you will always end up with a hybrid system that is an emergent result of optimizing on the freedom of the individual. The real debate is how socialist/capitalist and where and when and how each side of that coin should pan out. The real problem is that the boom or bust nature of well... nature, now plays out at a global economic scale. Just like a slime mold that consumes all its food, it will die off at the fringes. I think communism is a system that kills itself. Capitalism just let's itself grow until it reaches a limit where it's own fringes wither (literally meaning people dying.) But overall things have balanced out so there is almost a "standing wave of suffering." Which seems far less severe than the suffering that results from imposing the communist model on entire populations.

I swear that was art from Kotor 2. Pretty sure I had it as a wallpaper back in the day, but can't find it anywhere since...