Hurlshort

That seems like an overreaction to a response that you seem to feel is an overreaction.

Some skeezy stuff about MCA, yikes. It sounds like it will not affect the development of the game though.

Phoenix Point - I had some technical issues back when this was released, so I gave it time to marinate. Now that I have gotten into it, it is a pretty fun game. I am enjoying the story, and the squad level combat has a lot of variety.

You are correct. It's a weird shift. A few years and 30 pounds ago I had borderline high blood pressure, bad knees and I would throw my back out about once a year. I wasn't in terrible shape. I could still get up and down the ice in a hockey game. But I didn't feel like I had a lot of energy. Part of that was just being a parent. The early years are tough because you are just trying to keep them alive. I mean, they have very little sense of self-preservation for the first chunk of years. It was exhausting. So I started running, and the energy started coming back, and some pounds went away, and the blood pressure got better. That improvement can be a bit of an addiction in itself. You have to keep pushing to see more improvements. But I have way more energy. My back still gets tight, my knees still swell, but I recover way faster from those things. I also get to do amazing things like swim across the San Francisco Bay or climb a snow topped mountain with my bike. There are no regrets.

That reminds me of a funny thread I read on that Nextdoor social media site the other day. Nextdoor is kind of a humorous facebook site where neighbors complain about each other. Now our town is divided up into a few different areas. There is the main area that is mostly single family homes with easy freeway access for commuting. It's very suburban and sprawls across a valley floor. Then we have a clump of houses up on the ridge line called Holiday Lake Estates. A lady from up there posted that she wanted to learn how to handle a gun, because of the current unrest. She was concerned that the police would not be able to respond quickly to her. I was like, the police have never been able to respond quickly to you. You live on a mountain ridge! It's a 10-minute drive to get up there no matter how well funded the police department is or how many officers are available. Also, nobody is climbing up that hill to loot and riot in your quiet neighborhood. Your level of risk has not changed in any way due to the current political climate. Meanwhile I live a block away from the city center, and we've had a number of protest marches come through. They've all been chill. My safety is much more at risk from all the bad drivers that zip around our side streets trying to avoid freeway traffic than I am any bands of roving antifa fighters.

I don't remember if I talked about this, but I had a solid B cup on my leg after crashing my bike. It was just this weird sac of fluid hanging out right where I impacted. When I started running again, it would jiggle up and down painfully, so I started wearing a compression sleeve on my thigh. My wife used that as an opportunity to lecture me about the importance of good sports bras. Anyways, the fluid is nearly gone now, and my wife has upgraded her collection of sports bras. You have my sympathy, Azdeus.

My apologies. I must have misunderstood your stance on the issue.

So far you are the only person in the thread that seems to think the US system is alright. It's not a Euro vs. US thing.

Eh, we've talked this to death with Gfted1. I suppose it is good he doesn't stress about it, as that could lead to a lot of health issues, and the bills from that may surprise him.

So the current system: 1. Charges you thousands of dollars every year in premiums, which are probably matched by your employer, whether you use it or not 2. Charges you co-pays for most services. Sure, $20 to see the doctor seems reasonable, but that doesn't count towards your deductible. This gets trickier with extras. I went to the ER a few weeks ago, and even though my deductible is met, I have a co-insurance bill of $90 from the ER, $15 from radiology, and I will get another one from the ER doctor, I assume. 3. My family max deductible is $2000 for in-network coverage. That's not crazy. We hit it every year, because I believe in preventative care and we are super active. Of course, if you end up out of network for something, this ratchets up to $40,000. Basically I am an emergency room visit to a non-network hospital away from massive debt. Gfted, you probably are too. Of course, if you get something like cancer, you can expect all of these numbers to go crazy. All the while, the insurance company profits by providing as little service as possible. It's a dumb system that isn't built around health, it is built around profits. Which unless you are seeing those profits, I don't see why you would defend it.

I just don't understand how anyone can look at the way we pay for healthcare in the US and think it is working. It is completely broken. It shouldn't be a partisan issue. Everyone needs health care. We provide a K-12 education to every child in this country. We manage to feed the entire country. There is clean water. There is electricity. When a community fails to get one of these basic services, it is a big outrage. People aren't expected to go into debt to secure them. Why can't we figure out how to offer health care to everyone at a reasonable cost? Everyone in the country should want that!

I will always remember the Giants pitching Zito in 2012 during the playoffs, and then bringing in Tim Lincecum in relief. The other team had to be thinking "How many Cy Young pitchers they got waiting over there?"

It's never too early! But realistically, EA hasn't nailed a good single player campaign in awhile, so I would say pessimism is the right approach for me. I'd be glad to be wrong, but I wish they'd separate these games. Battlefront doesn't need a campaign, focus on making it the best multiplayer game possible. If you want to tell a good story, keep it single player and make that the main focus. edit: Rockstar does this well, I think. They start with the single player story and build everything around it. Then they develop the multiplayer mode around the engine and art assets, and really don't work on it fully until the story is done. But then again, many would say the multiplayer suffers because of that focus.

Squadrons looks like it will be 5 on 5 battles. I'd rather have a single player story, like X-Wing/Tie Fighter. Elite: Dangerous and X4: Foundations seem to have that pretty well covered.

I had a buddy in college get a DUI at a tailgate for a football game. He was behind the wheel but not actively driving. He was cited and not arrested. I assume he was blasting his music or something obnoxious. I think he got it dropped.

Trump cancelled his Juneteenth rally, which was a bit of a surprise. I mean, credit is deserved for being willing to make a change to something. Still has quite a ways to go though.

I doubt anyone will care or notice until it is time to pay your property taxes, GD.

There is a long and glorious history of making fun of new console designs.

Hades, may he rest in peace, would have hated this game.

So...apparently this guy races with the confederate flag. And in keeping with confederate tradition, he never wins.

In other news, Rage Against the Machine had a hilarious response to complaints that they've become too political: https://www.nme.com/news/music/tom-morello-twitter-respond-to-people-only-just-realising-rage-against-the-machine-are-political-2685353

I tried to navigate through the crazy amount of Stellaris DLC before starting a new campaign. I already had Federations, but I decided to add the humanoid pack so I could make a dwarf galactic mining consortium, and the artifact story pack. I know I should have waited for a sale, but I want to play now! This DLC stuff is dangerous, you can spend waaaay too much on it.

So last month we had local militia folk showing up armed to government buildings to protest wearing masks or whatever, and now we have local antifa folk showing up armed to parks to protest the police or whatever. What is the difference, again?

You guys are crazy. It is clearly the fact that cities are filled with democrats and small towns are filled with Republicans.