thedopefishlives

A cat lays asleep on a grey cloth pad on a table, her back to a window showing a grey cloudy/rainy day outside.

Kiriko is choosing to ignore the #Caturday outside. It’s naptime. #CatsOfBluesky

I feel obligated to point out that if a reasonable observer is left questioning whether you wrote such a document while drunk or used an LLM to write it, your decision-making skills may not be suited to the job.

That's absolutely insane. So, of course someone is trying it.

They're not just at war with the concept of America. They're at war with reality itself.

My counterpoint has now been made for me. I would rather not be in the uncomfortable position of having no control over my (extremely expensive) bed because the capricious gods of Amazon fucked up their DNS infrastructure. Kthxbai.

As a software developer, I get asked from time to time if I do any home automation. "No," I reply instinctively, "smart devices are too easy to do wrong, and too expensive when done right." The questioner then usually proceeds into a diatribe of assorted "benefits" smart homes provide.

Initial estimate for No Kings Twin Cities at 100,000! So many Minnesotans SHOWED UP to protect our communities, our country and our democracy that the 1+ mile march route looped back and found thousands hadn’t even left the starting point! 👏❌👑

Minneapolis is showing up and showing out. #NoKings

A grey and orange cat lays on a blue armchair, with a blue and black baby mitten between her front paws.

Kiriko cuddles with her favorite mitten on #Caturday #CatsOfBluesky

I mean, to Mike Johnson and the modern GOP, the values of the United States are totalitarianism, an all-powerful strongman leader, ignorance, bigotry, bullying, and sneering cruelty. I do hate those things, and I hate the people who embrace them, so I guess I hate their America.

I keep getting better results every time. These were incredible.

Two halves of a rack of ribs lay in a foil-lined pan, resting after being taken out of a smoker.

Smoked pork spare ribs on a Sunday.

Two cats eat food on opposite sides of a glass patio door.

#Caturday treats with Kiriko and Moonshine #CatsOfBluesky

Oh, and we can't forget the preview of Hero 45, which is always exciting. Blizzard seems to have left the idea of a "filler season" behind, coming up with exciting new twists even when they're not delivering major overhauls. Keep up the good work, guys! I'm all in!

So... #Overwatch continues to rock my world every season. There is soooo much cool stuff coming up in Season 19 on Tuesday. Double mythic skins (and mythics for some of my favorite heroes), Ana rework and gadgets in Stadium, a new Halloween mode featuring team-ups - the bangers just keep hitting.

So, I betrayed my friends on Kairos and started Ghost of Yotei last night. It's as phenomenal as I expected. Beautiful game, similar mechanics, and I'm loving the story line. I'm going to deeply enjoy getting platinum on this one.

Yeah, usually when a studio is getting bought out, it's a studio that's in trouble, or a small indie dev that made a smash hit game and got noticed by the big boys. Not friggin' EA.

A cat lays on a hammock mounted on a picture window, in the sun behind blue blackout curtains.

Kiriko the solar powered cat is recharging in her dock on #Caturday #CatsOfBluesky

Reposted with alt text. Also, from a cursory look, this appears to basically be true, which is pretty funny. Philosophers... debate.

Matthew 15:29-31: And great crowds came to him, bringing with them the lame, the blind, the crippled, the mute, and many others, and they put them at his feet, and he healed them after verifying their citizenship status.

There is a gulf in America. I submit it is the gulf between good and evil, or at least not-evil and evil.

The gulf is not just between people who oppose this and people who are indifferent to it or reluctantly accept it in support of immigration policy or see it as collateral damage.
/1

You might argue that some of these franchises might do better with other studios, and yes, there's a possibility there, but the fact is that EA still employs some tremendously talented people, and blowing it all up is going to be a loss for the industry as a whole.

Now, I'm hardly EA's biggest fan; the fact that they've been making money hand over fist for 25 years by churning out the next iterations of "Sportsball Franchise X" has always boggled my mind. But they don't deserve to be ripped apart like this. It's a bad deal all around.

Private equity is a horrendous business model. It takes all the assets, sells them piecemeal for profits, then abandons ship and declares bankruptcy on the debts. This effectively means the death of EA as a video game studio, with individual franchise IPs being sold off to other studios.

So, the big gaming news of the day is the US$55B EA acquisition by a private investment group, headlined by Jared Kushner and the Saudi Arabian sovereign wealth fund. There are some wild concerns about what this could mean for the content of the games, but I have another concern.

A grey tabby cat lays in the dark under a wood-framed open bottom shelf.

Kiriko is hiding from #Caturday #CatsOfBluesky

I've played a bunch of Stadium, thanks to the anniversary event challenges to do 10 games in a group, and Tracer (now that she's fixed) feels so fun to play, even if I can't land a pulse bomb to save my life.

And that's it. That's where I'm at with gaming. I'll try not to be so long next time.

Last but not least, my love, my main game, Overwatch. Season 18 is a gigabanger. The perk changes help keep the game interesting, without causing churn on hero balance. Wuyang is fantastic, like Zenyatta with movement. I'm sad they cut the season short, because the game feels good and is fun.

More than that, though, is the fact that they continue to dance around the problems with dive. Strategists are still vulnerable to skilled duelists, and it makes good strong support players stay away from the role. Who wants to heal if you're just going to get jumped all game?

I'm not a game designer or balancer, but I think this is a consequence of 6v6 open queue, because powerful tanks is how you get Overwatch's infamous GOATS meta. But Angela is uniquely hard to secure value with, to the point where you have to invest everything just to get one kill. That's bad.