If you happen to have easy access to the ROM, how’s “Star Wars: Racer Revenge” run?

It’s the less popular but more fleshed out spiritual successor to the N64 pod racing game - the PS2’s take nailed the physics - the two engines and racer pod are (or at least feel like) three separate entities, and playing in first person view with the engines controlled separately by the left and right joysticks feels fucking magical.

Tried to run it on PCSX2 years ago, but it was one of the few games that meshed so poorly with the emulator that it wasn’t playable. I’m guessing the emulator has seen some improvements since then - could definitely use a nice shot of nostalgia.

Zotero

If you’re in any flavor of academics from middle school to doctorate program or otherwise writing papers that require strict citation formatting, drop what you’re doing and click that link.

Or probably YouTube it or something first so you can see why it’s so much better than your standard internet citation generators.

Don’t forget to share the intel with your classmates!

Edit - honorable mention to Desmos for 99% of your calculator needs… with the unfortunate exception of exams, cuz phone.

…and a swan-dive into fascism is preferable to that because…?

Our political model is janky as fuck. I don’t need to explain the pitfalls of a two-party system to you - I already know you fucking hate it or you wouldn’t be eyeing a 3rd in the first place. I hate it too. But a two party system is what we have, which means you have three options:

• Red (fascism)

• Blue (not fascism)

• Let the other voters choose Red or Blue for you (abstain or vote 3rd).

Which of those options will do the best job of accomplishing YOUR goals?

What even are your goals? 3rd party as POTUS? You gotta lay the groundwork first. 2016 was the perfect stage for a 3rd party victory within our current model: we had an absolutely hated candidate running on both of the big two; a voterbase just as sick of the status quo as they are now; a Libertarian with a genuinely likable personality, some solid policy stances, and who managed to shift the “crazy” that Libertarians were reputed for to an honestly charming variety of “quirky”, and a surprisingly steady stream of coverage by the media. We will never see better conditions for a 3rd victory in our current model.

So how did the Libertarians do with that perfect storm? 3%. They got fucking 3% of the vote. How do those conditions compare to today’s? Red is running that same hated sack of shit Trump; but Blue couldn’t find a candidate hated as much as Hillary if they tried to - to the contrary, Harris is churning up optimism like I’ve never seen before. The die-hard Reds and Blues aren’t going to change their votes over that, but the folks in the middle are going to be far less inclined to vote 3rd than they were in 2016. 3rds have gotten pretty much zero media attention this time around. They literally do not stand a chance to beat even 2016’s 3%, let alone enough to actually win.

Your only way to the top is to change the political model into one that’s more favorable to you; and the easiest way to do that is to keep not-fascism in power long enough to get the general population pissed off enough about not having ranked choice that it starts making its way into bigger and bigger elections. Your next-easiest path to victory is insurrection… that most likely both fail and get yourself killed, so please don’t do that. Your least-easy path to victory is to allow fascism to take root, as that will push the model even further away from your reach: if that happens it’s game over for everyone except the fascists.

If you see a different option that’ll lead to a 3rd victory in our current model, I’m all ears; but if not, you still need to set the stage with favorable conditions, to include preventing the stage from being burned to the ground.

The Dems will preserve a political model that’s at least malleable. 3rds will need to work together to push ranked choice more and more into voters’ field of view.

Republicans will swan-dive into fascism, in which case 3rds (and everyone else) are fucked.

Dems aren’t going to help 3rds directly, but any one who wants the possibility of a 3rd party victory later is committing political suicide by failing to vote blue as a means of buying time. Voting 3rd when that 3rd has no potential for victory is self-destructive.

For me personally? I mean shit like this. Love it ^_^

For you, I have no idea what kind of music you’re into, but there are a ton of options for instrumental.

Memes are brain sneezes.

Now, how can I fix this infamous autotune trend?

Instrumental-only music?

Even at face value, the whole “candidate earns your vote!” spiel is just not how our system works.

We have two options. You can nudge the outcome a tiny bit in either direction by directly voting for one, or you can let the other voters decide for you by either abstaining or voting 3rd, but end result is red team or blue team.

It’d be ideal if one of those actually did ‘earn’ your vote, but it doesn’t always pan out that way. If you’re not an idiot, you choose the one that’s least bad.

…and this election, one of the two options is a fucking Nazi.

I think Harris actually has done plenty to earn my vote beyond the whole lesser evil schtick, but frankly my praise or complaints about her are all moot because she’s not a fucking Nazi.

Stein wants to trick people into wasting their nudge away from the Nazi. Stein is helping the Nazi. Stein can go fuck herself.

I think that’s maybe a bit harsh compared to a lot of the games mentioned here.

For sure - by “looking at it through the lens of relativity” I guess I failed to specify what I was holding it relative to - where my brain’s at W1 as a starting point, and the quality of W2 and W3… Relative to other trilogies that actually did well, Witcher’s starting point is hot trash. Like, a game that bad doesn’t generally go on to have good sequels, but the degree of improvement in both W2 and W3 is fucking astounding.

Looking through the lens of relativity, I’d have to say Witcher I. The fact that the fucking masterpiece that is Witcher III and not-amazing-but-definitely-worth-a-playthrough that is Witcher II both stemmed from the comically bad dumpster fire that was #1 is nothing short of a miracle.

The franchise *should* have died at #1, but I’m sure glad it didn’t.

We need a new word for the opposite of eating the onion… Cuz The Onion accidentally made actual news again.

https://www.cbsnews.com/sacramento/news/poll-41-percent-of-trump-supporters-favor-bombing-aladdins-fictional-home-of-agrabah/

Its a spectrum of stupid on one end and evil on the other. They’re either suckered into supporting evil through some dumbass cause like protecting bathrooms; smart enough to see the difference but too evil to care; or somewhere in between. I’m not aware of any exceptions.

…those folks sure do make a strong sales pitch for communism…

Naw, if his aim was any indication, he was still a bit sleepy.

Really is a shame he skipped his morning coffee that day - if he was just a tad more woke he could have saved us all a lot of trouble.

Here’s hoping the next guy gets plenty of rest first.

Taste the rainbow!

This song gets under my skin. Those monotonal long notes just never stop.

70% of this song is

eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

and

aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

rips ears off

HP printers.

Really HP anything on principle, but their printers take the cake for anti-user bullshit.

No more religious things. Books, buildings, posters, gatherings, merchandise, websites, teachings…

You can talk to your imaginary friend in private, but no more spreading that shit to youth or folks in a vulnerable state of mind.

One generation and that garbage is either done and gone forever; or I just triggered judgement day and learn the hard way that I fucked up and the religious crowd gets their coveted ascension. Win win.

Can of Monster (zero sugar / 10 calories / 140mg caffeine) is my breakfast most days. My blood pressure runs pretty high, but I also have insomnia (started waaay before I discovered energy drinks), work full time, am going to school part time, and have chronic pain in multiple locations, so… Monster or not, it’s gonna be fucking high. Probably less high without the Monster, I’m under no illusion that it’s good for me, but the moral of the story is your physiology is dependent on a TON of variables; whether or not your lifestyle adds up to ‘healthy’ is a tally on how you manage all of them.

Also some variables are unknown - I could have shitty blood vessels and not know it until I randomly rupture my aortic artery, or have a weak heart or something, and with things like that, energy drinks can absolutely be the straw that breaks the camel’s back.

Seems anything that tastes or feels good comes with some risk.

Do pay attention to your total caffeine intake though… a can of monster, followed by some coffee, followed by some pre-workout, followed by some tea, and you’re looking at like a full gram of caffeine in a single day. THAT can kill you.