Well, that was unexpectedly great. I’d love to hear your favorite subtle thing.

Also curious what the book ending was, if you want to share, @[email protected].

I think Stephen King is very good at writing stories, but often very bad at ending them; quite a few of his books have great setups but end in an unsatisfying or anticlimactic way. Very much liked the movie ending, though - was not at all what I expected, and very emotionally impactful.

I first watched The Running Man shortly after finishing the book (which I quite enjoyed), expecting to see a movie adaptation of it, when in fact the most basic details of the premise are the only similarity between the two; as a result, I was pretty disappointed, but from what I remember of it, ‘trashy good time’ is a pretty apt description.

At least while I was going to school there, my high school’s football team never won a single game.

I actually don’t think I’ve seen The Mist, but now I think I’m going to give it a watch based on your recommendation.

Why not watch one of the good ones, instead? I’d recommend:

• Carrie
• Shawshank Redemption
• Delores Clayborne
• The Green Mile
• Stand By Me

It sounds like he’s a legitimate danger to others on the road. I wouldn’t let that go unreported. Think about it like this: If you do nothing, and then later read that he hit someone and hurt or killed them, will you feel guilty about not saying anything?

Maybe it’s just for the catharsis.

This is actually an interesting question. How is age handled in a space-age civilization? Someone born on one planet could be 10 while on a different planet they’d be 50 in the same timeframe. What if you spend part of your life on one and the rest on another? It’d be inconvenient to use one planet’s ‘day’ as the standard, as they’d all be different lengths…

The only downside is that the participants need to be familiar enough with their chosen game to do a randomizer which means roping in casual players is difficult.

Casual players can be fine with some games. Some actually become easier with Archipelago (e.g. Noita, Risk of Rain 2) since you’re getting meta-progression between runs that normally wouldn’t be there. Others though are especially punishing for new players (Doom comes to mind - you have to be pretty intimately familiar with the levels. There’s keys hidden in secret areas sometimes, for example, and ammo can be very scarce.)

The app I was using was making it look like everything I was replying to was from the same poster, when in fact it was not. I’ve already apologized for that error.

The only circumstance under which I would support a revolution is if the government simply ceases to function (which it may, now, under Trump - who knows? But I don’t wish to bank on that possibility, nor do I wish to cause a non-functioning government simply to justify a revolution; that’s no better than Republicans grinding everything to a standstill then claiming that their ability to do so is evidence that the government isn’t working.) The pragmatic stance is to vote for the better of the candidates who can reasonably win elections while directing effort towards changing the reasons why we only have two candidates to choose from.

Revolution that isn’t supported by the majority of people is simply imposing a viewpoint on people who do not want it, and even if it would ultimately be better for them in the long run, it’s no better than Christian Nationalists trying to impose their viewpoint on everyone else.

If it is supported by the majority of people, it should be able to be resolved via the democratic process. What’s stopping that right now is the two-party system that we’re stuck in, and that can’t be resolved without voting reform, so that’s where I’m choosing to direct my efforts. It’s not that it will single-handedly change society, but it’s the first step in a process that will, theoretically, allow new, more progressive and left-leaning parties to rise to relevance.

There have been multiple states that have had ranked-choice voting on their ballots (including mine), but they largely haven’t passed, so I would argue that yes, it is feasible to achieve it without revolution, but thus far it seems that people don’t understand why it’s needed (and therefore it’s a matter of getting the word out and raising awareness), or they simply disagree with it and want to maintain the status quo (and if that’s honestly the majority opinion, and it’s not just a perception or information problem, then so be it - that just means that we’re in a minority and we shouldn’t be forcing the majority to bend to our viewpoint any more than they should be forcing us to bend to theirs.).

Look, I think we agree on a lot of things. I support many socialist views; capitalism is an awful system, corporate greed and income inequality and money in politics are some of the biggest problems with society and some of the biggest inhibitors to change. However, I don’t think communism is a viable solution. In my opinion, the ideal solution would still allow accumulation of personal wealth, but would distribute wealth based on how much good a person has brought to society, rather than on how much of a sociopath they’re willing to be to get it. I believe most people are greedy and I believe most people are motivated by personal gain moreso than anything else. Not everyone, obviously, but most people, and I think the only way we’re going to get people to abandon the ‘Fuck you, got mine’ attitude is by rewarding behaviors we want to reinforce, which capitalism obviously does not do.

I said I wasn’t going to reply again, and I’m going to mostly stick to that, but I do want to issue a self-correction for one thing.

I was reading this thread on an app that doesn’t do a good job of differentiating different posters, and I was replying to a few different people and (incorrectly) attributing some of the more inflammatory things I was reading to you. Now that I’m looking at it on a PC, I can see that it was actually multiple people, so I apologize for that. Of the people I was replying to, you were the least objectionable, but we still have fundamental differences of opinion that we will not be able to resolve here.

Your ‘plan’ is not a plan so much as a general set of vague guidelines. My ‘plan’, with the same degree of validity, is to (continue to) support my local community, work towards conversions to better voting systems, and try to weather the next four years while continuing to take a pragmatist’s stance on political candidates.

What I find insufferable about you and the majority of the vocal folk who share your views are that you don’t seem interested in actually having a conversation about your views. You’re all quite ready to put words in other peoples’ mouths and adopt a holier-than-thou attitude towards everyone, while not considering that many of us might share a lot of your views if you weren’t so damn militant about everything. We probably have quite a lot in common, but painting everyone who isn’t a marxist as a capitalist / fascist isn’t helping your cause, not in the slightest.

This will be the last thing I say here, so feel free to get your last word in.

The first time someone shoots one down, they’re going to make it so that downing a drone has the same criminal penalty as attacking an officer. Mark my words.

This type of rhetoric is why I and many others just cannot take you folks or your views seriously.

I don’t care if they did or didn’t; I find them to be completely insufferable and have no desire to engage with them further.

I didn’t get Trump elected, lol.

And this right here is our unresolvable ideological difference. You refuse to consider that by not voting for the better option, you’re partially responsible for what we have now. Good luck with your revolution, I guess. We have nothing else to discuss.

What’s your plan B?

What’s yours? Since letting Trump get elected was apparently Step 1, what’s Step 2? Where are we going now? Come on, fill us in.

Or, alternately, stop putting words in other peoples’ mouths and consider that what we have now is worse for everyone than the alternative would have been.

This wasn’t the Democrats being failed, it was the whole country being failed. It wasn’t about voting for the Democrats, it was about voting against Donald Trump, and there was only one way to effectively do that. Everyone who refused to do that got exactly what they voted for with Trump, whatever ends up happening, but rather than accepting that maybe this was the worst option, they’re just posting memes about how everyone didn’t push back against the democrats hard enough, so I doubt it’ll sink in.

I use the default config with the sensitivity turned up to 225% (which makes the touchpad’s left-right width equate to a bit more than the full screen width); that works fine for me. I play a lot of deckbuilders, point-and-click style games, isometric RPGs, tactics games, or just generally older / indie titles that don’t have good native controller support, and it’s been a lifesaver for those.

It doesn’t feel as good as a mouse, I won’t claim that it does, but it makes those games go from “unplayable” to “playable” and that’s the jump I was looking for.