IDK. I could see a sequel making sense. After Truman leaves, the dome is still there and all the infrastructure still exists. Why wouldn’t they just go again with another kid? Hell, maybe that just becomes part of the show’s appeal. You know they’re going to figure it out eventually, and all the drama is on seeing how long that takes and what the reaction will be. You wouldn’t even have to use many of the same characters.

Now Truman himself going back in the dome? That would be stupid.

Removed by mod

Because I don’t live in a solipsism that concludes nothing is real?

These things exist in degrees.

Fuck Donald J Trump. I hope the rat bastard dies shitting himself inside out.

Try talking like that about Xi on Chinese social media.

Eh. The US has been around just as long as a civilization. If the Chinese get to claim credit for the radically different ancient predecessors to modern China, then the US can claim decent from both the ancient Native American civilizations as well as the ancient Middle Eastern civilizations that are ultimately the predecessors of many countries such as the US.

Sure. But the point is they viewed those updates as an obligation, not a bonus. I view those first updates as an obligation - merely delivering the core features promised. But anything beyond that is a bonus.

Games are also just released in a poorer state now than they were in the past. Consider the extreme - old school console games. Anything from the pre-Dreamcast era couldn’t ever receive updates. The Dreamcast was the first console to have internet access built in. Hell, millions of people played computer games without having an internet connection. In that era, you could never update your game, except for going to new release versions. You could fix bugs in your new cartridges, but once an NES game was sold and out in the world, that was it.

But over time, it’s now become safe for publishers to assume their customers have internet access. Net access has become so ubiquitous that it can safely be assumed that anyone with enough money for a gaming console also has money for at least a cheap internet connection. What few exceptions to this exist are so small in number publishers can just ignore them.

Internet updates started as something rare. But they became the norm. And then the expectation. And finally the default assumption. Companies have since found that they can outsource a lot of their bug testing to their customers. Why spend money hiring hundreds of play testers to explore every nook, cranny, and odd game path, trying to root out every bug? Why not instead do just enough to make sure the game is decently playable? You pay for a small amount of bug testing. Then you sell your game to thousands or millions of people, and your customers do your bug testing for you!

Even better, you can value-engineer bugs now! In the past, you had to be incredibly thorough. Your testers couldn’t know how often a given bug or exploit would be encountered by the average player. They were trying to find everything. But with modern analytics, you can take a bastard bean-counter’s approach to bug fixing. Everything players do is tracked. So when people report bugs, analyze what portion of play throughs will ever encounter that bug. If it’s rare enough to not likely deter sales, then don’t bother spending money to fix it. This is how known bugs go unfixed for years. The question is not, “is there a bug?” The question is, “is there a sales-relevant bug?”

In short, people now expect updates a lot more because games simply aren’t built like they used to be. Sure, buggy games always existed. Fly-by-night operators would make buggy shovelware and sell it to unsuspecting grandmas. But games from reputable publishers were thoroughly tested and debugged, as an internet-connected customer could not be assumed. Now, games at launch have become bug-filled messes. And they’re often shipped without their advertised and intended features fully implemented yet. And we’ve just become accustomed to this. We’ve learned to tolerate developer laziness. But in turn, we also expect updates to polish these turds on the backend.

I would say it depends on the update. Bug fixes and things that should have reasonably been included in the original game? That’s a right. New content, new items, new bosses, new features that redefine gameplay, etc? That’s a bonus.

Like, let’s say there’s a feature that was shown in advertisements but wasn’t quite ready for the launch date. That’s an obligation; the company simply being expected to deliver what it promised. Some people likely bought the game contingent on knowing those features are on the way. I myself bought Kerbal Space Program 2. I loved the original and really wanted to help them continue their work. Hell, I met most of their dev team at a game con. But when I bought the game, I bought it not because of its features at launch, but because of all the features they were promising to implement. I feel really cheated after they shut it down before the game was finished. Sure, they delivered a nominally functional game, but it didn’t even match the scope of KSP1, let alone all the advertised features. And the thing is still a buggy mess. I do consider it an obligation to deliver on features you’ve promised. It’s also an obligation to deliver a game that is reasonably functional and free of bugs.

Compare KSP 2 to two other games I’ve played, No Man’s Sky and Satisfactory. Those games not only delivered on their original promises, but have kept making new content for years after they delivered what they promised. Any new features on these games are something I consider a bonus, something I’m joyful to receive, not something I feel obligated to receive.

Yeah. I’m imagining a suicide bomber wearing a huge fat suit like Mike Myers wore when played Fat Bastard. Just a giant fake belly with a literal nuclear bomb concealed inside.

Though really, I think the real problem with a “nuclear suicide vest” is simple practicality. Like, what’s the actual point? The whole point of a suicide vest is to be able to smuggle explosives into an area where they’ll do the most damage. A guy holding a bomb in his hands won’t be let into a crowded bus. Someone holding a pipe bomb is going to cause people to run away from them screaming. A suicide vest bomber seeks to sneak into a crowded space densely packed with many people. Suicide bombers need to get close to large numbers of people. They need a bomb that can be concealed on their person. Otherwise they end up doing no more damage than someone could with a handgun.

But a nuke? You don’t need to sneak the nuke into the stadium. You set it off five blocks away. It doesn’t need to be concealed. If you want to deliver a terrorist nuking, you would instead load it on the back of a truck with heavy radiation shielding. You don’t try to sneak it in to a crowded location. You just try to drive it into a dense urban area or near a critical piece of infrastructure and hope to not set off any radiation detectors along the way. A nuclear truck bomb is a reasonable fear. A nuclear suicide vest is laughable.

The problem wasn’t the knife regulation. We should allow such tiny knives on planes. They’re harmless. You can go to a fancy restaurant in the airport and get served steak with a steak knife. You can bring an object with a glass piece in it, smash the glass once you’re passed security, and have a small bladed weapon that way. You can bring in dull metal and file into a sharp edge on the tile of the floor of the family bathroom prison shive style. It’s trivially easy to get such a small bladed weapon inside the security cordon. Hell, some people have finger nails that are more dangerous than those knives.

The real impactful change after 9/11 was reinforcing the cockpit doors, and putting in regulations requiring them to remain closed and locked during flight. That was the real impactful change. The TSA’s just security theater.

Both you and your grandpa were right. But you both missed the real solution.

I doubt they’re actually doing it. But it is possible to build nuclear bombs that can be carried by a single person and that are concealable. The US has deployed such weapons in the past. And we managed to do it with 1950s technology.

It is actually possible, though it would stretch the definition of “vest.” It’s not something that can really fit on a vest, but I suppose you could hide it in a fat suit, a wheelchair, or a fake pregnancy belly.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W54

The W54 was a 1 kiloton bomb that weighed a bit over 50 lbs. It was built to be a man-portable demolition charge. It’s certainly possible for something like that to be built in a way that could be concealed on your person.

Project 2025 literally has as one of its planks the idea that simply living life as a trans person is a pornographic act. This belief comes from men who see being trans and being pornographic as one and the same. Where do you think that belief comes from?

I don’t give a damn what kind of porn people watch. I do care that this colors their perspective on how trans people actually live. Most of us aren’t sex workers. And most of us that are don’t do it by choice. We’re just people trying to live our lives. This kind of thinking is incredibly dangerous, as it leads to believing that someone just being themselves in public is an act of sexual exhibitionism. I didn’t transition as a sex thing. My life is not a costume. I transitioned and have lived my entire adult life as myself, worked my entire career and built my entire life around my transitioned name and gender. Rather than a 24/7 drag act, most days I’m wearing jeans and hoodie.

We’re just trying to live our lives in peace. But a bunch of perverts are using their porn habits to inform their moral judgments about an entire class of people.

Well where’s your truck bomb, tough guy?

Obvious fed is obvious.

We’re talking the goal. Actually implementing it successfully is another matter entirely.

You need to be thinking beyond just this law. Once you make it mandatory for all sites to use age verification, you then pass other laws to patch the holes in the system. Look at the DMCA. They made it a felony to bypass copyright restriction technology. They could write a law making it a felony to bypass age verification tools, even if you yourself are over 18. Just like it’s currently a felony to use technology to bypass copyright protection tools, even for media that you’ve legally purchased.

It’s more about ad revenue. Advertisers don’t want to pay for bots to read their ads.

Obviously!

<Beat CEO in the face with a tire iron.>

“I’m not changing anything, I’m just enhancing your face!”