WhiningCoil
Ghost of Quokka's Future
No bio...
User ID: 269
WhiningCoil
Ghost of Quokka's Future
6mo ago
Congratulations, you just made the worst argument in the world for the millionth time. "You don't care? That makes you a bad person."
I don't care because I already lived through worse in 08, assorted points during Obama where we nearly "broke the buck", COVID, and most recently at points in 2022 where all the gains of my portfolio were wiped out going back to 2017. These tariff hiccups don't even take my portfolio back to the beginning of 2024.
Also, it's not a loss until you sell. Which if you do, you're a chump. Panic selling the bottom is how they get you.
I don't care about daily stock market swings because they are fucking retarded, and you shouldn't either.
WhiningCoil
Ghost of Quokka's Future
6mo ago
I mean, I get that, but I don't.
Like, I get that if we're talking about a court case. Diving into the minutia of which legal arguments the Supreme Court will agree with, and which justices will go which way. Less so when it comes to individual court cases, like Rittenhouse, although I understand they are good drama and lightning rods for the culture war. I certain dove all in on some of them.
I get it when it comes to hot conflicts like Ukraine and Russia, and debating tactics, strategy and capabilities. Especially because reality quickly asserts itself.
The tariff discussion though... all I know is that all the same talking heads who've been wrong about everything insist tariff's will destroy the economy. They quote that the last time we did this was 100 years ago, and that simultaneously that's how we know it's a terrible idea, but also that the world has changed so much tariffs won't work like they used to when Trump brags about how great they were 100 years ago.
Fact of the matter is, Trump is a singular figure in history. He doesn't compare to anyone else. As well, these tariffs, coming from him, with the state of the world being what it is, is a singular moment in history that cannot be compared to any other. 10 years from now, some people might rise to the top as "having been right about the Trump tariffs". Some of them might have even done so on purpose! But I would also not be shocked if they lead to outcomes nobody predicts and nobody gets it completely, or even half right. You might as well be arguing about the next number at the craps table.
WhiningCoil
Ghost of Quokka's Future
6mo ago
I've largely ignore all the tariff talk the last, jeeze, two weeks? Three weeks? It's just repetitive top level posts really adding nothing over and over and over again, everyone so certain they know what's going to happen.
Nobody knows what's going to happen. Did anyone know this would happen? Does anyone know what happens next?
I'm just so tired with everyone's vapid obsession with tariffs. To the point where it feels like a psyop. I've repeated my criteria for the Trump administration, and my hesitancy to rush to judgement too quickly. I'm waiting until the mid terms to see if my life has gotten better, or worse. I don't care about twitter post, I don't care about stock market swings, I do care about inflation, but in the "Has my pay risen faster than my grocery bill" sense and not a "Here's how the federal reserve is lying with statistics" kind of way.
Can we all reflect, for a moment, about all the breath and ink that has been feverishly spilled over this topic the last two weeks, to come to what? Do we even know what this point is supposed to represent? Or what tomorrow's tweets will be?
We've had topic bans before, and honestly I wouldn't be opposed to a month long ban on tariff discussion. Or putting it into it's own thread. Might as well be arguing alternate histories as far as I'm concerned.
WhiningCoil
Ghost of Quokka's Future
6mo ago
I think your 20 year old memory is better than my 20 year old memory on this one. I was misremembering Warrior Within as Two Thrones.
WhiningCoil
Ghost of Quokka's Future
6mo ago
Marc Andreessen has been shouting about it from the roof tops.
Why Marc Andreessen was ‘very scared’ after meeting with the Biden administration about AI
He walked away believing they endorsed having the government control AI to the point of being market makers, allowing only a couple of companies who cooperated with the government to thrive. He felt they discouraged his investments in AI. “They actually said flat out to us, ‘don’t do AI startups like, don’t fund AI startups,” he said.
Here is a 41 second clip of him on Joe Rogan taking about it too
WhiningCoil
Ghost of Quokka's Future
6mo ago
I mean, in addition, to hear a lot of them tell it, The Biden admin basically said to them "We are giving Microsoft and Google an AI monopoly, and we are going to regulate the rest of you out of business. Plan accordingly." So they left the meeting and backed the guy who was not going to literally regulate their significant investments into bankruptcy.
WhiningCoil
Ghost of Quokka's Future
6mo ago
While the list of books has evolved over the last century, the tradition of all students reading foundational texts of Western civilization remains.
Yeah, it really does just say it right up front. Just another isolated demand for rigor. Not a single reading list can emphasize a pre-Marxist classical view of Western Civilization. Have to isolate them and act like they need to be "more diverse", ignoring all the diversity around them that people get plenty of already.
WhiningCoil
Ghost of Quokka's Future
6mo ago
It looks interesting, but I refuse to sign up to another fucking site to take their gamer astrology quiz.
Maybe Carmack takes it a bit far, but I think story in gaming is load bearing. At best it lets a game punch above it's weight. Portal minus the writing and world building is rather bland. But by the same token, think about how sparse the "writing" in Portal really is. Do you think it cracks 15 minutes of spoken dialog? Would the scattered bits of text in the game fit on the front and back of a notecard?
From one perspective, Carmack's dismissiveness towards writing and story is proven wrong by Portal. From another perspective, Carmack is vindicated, as Portal truly does have just enough writing to get the action going.
"Just enough to get the action going" is hardly a scientific measure, and one could argue an RPG takes more to "get the action going" than a puzzle game. But I enjoy the laconic inspiration behind the ethos. Nothing kills me worse in a game, even a game I am ostensibly enjoying, even an exposition dump I am ostensibly invested in (like when Xenoblade 3 almost made me cry), than when I get the feeling like this is nice and all, but I kind of want to play too, so can we wrap up this going on 30 minute cutscene?
WhiningCoil
Ghost of Quokka's Future
6mo ago
Reading game manuals in middle school is such a unique time period. It think it was really only the mid 90's where the manuals had enough heft and fluff to make that an interesting exercise, and also they were still actually printed and shipped with games. I poured over the manuals for Diablo, WarCraft 1 & 2, StarCraft, etc in middleschool. It really built up the anticipation to run home from school off the bus and boot them up again.
WhiningCoil
Ghost of Quokka's Future
6mo ago
Yeah, I generally carve out an exception for first party Nintendo games. I've adored almost every one I've played in recent years, Zelda: Breath of the Wild (Tears of the Kingdom less so), Mario Odyssey, Xenoblade 1-3, and more that are slipping my mind. I still mean to give Pikmin 4 a go since my wife got it for me for Christmas.
WhiningCoil
Ghost of Quokka's Future
6mo ago
I increasingly think Carmack was right. Story in games is like story in porn. You need just enough to get the action going. Most of my memorable moments in games come from overcoming challenges, rarely story beats. I rarely want to replay a game with a good story, because it takes so much work to get through it. If I want a story, I'll read a book or watch a movie. Increasingly just read a book these days.
The singular exception to this was ICO, who's environmental story telling was so masterful, which tied it's game mechanics into it so subtly, it blew me away with it's story in a way no other game has since. You were buying into it in ways you didn't even realize just playing the game normally. Raw genius.
Outside of that, I think I just want unpretentious serviceable game plots.
WhiningCoil
Ghost of Quokka's Future
6mo ago
Yeah, I can't disagree too strongly with any of that. But I think it's relative to where you put your high water mark. For you it's Bioshock 2, for it's writing and gameplay. For others it's System Shock 2 for climbing to the top of the hill Ultima Underworld discovered, with it's inventory management, statistics, skills and all. I think by the time we get to Bioshock Infinite, it's bifurcated, it's a distinctly different genre than what Ultima Underworld and System Shock were. But circa Bioshock 1, that wasn't clear yet, they were just beginning to go their own ways. So people might look at one or the other and say "Clearly this one is better" depending on whether they wanted a narrative action game or a first person RPG.
WhiningCoil
Ghost of Quokka's Future
6mo ago
Bioshock Infinite was a financial disaster because Ken Levine was completely unable to run an effective development team, it's really not any more complicated than that.
You know, yes, but also, this was the story of every studio left in the hands of creatives. They get a few workman efforts under their belt that put them in the black, and then they decide to go all in on their magnum opus. Happened to Richard Garriott, Chris Roberts, John Romero, Peter Molyneux, and countless others. People criticize Electronic Arts for putting so many much beloved studios into the graveyard. But there is a story to EA where they were angel investors bailing out failing studios that were months away from bankruptcy anyways, and lending them some management expertise to boot. They can't help it that they were working for egotistical man children for whom money fell from the skies in their formative years. I think Ken Levine was the straw that broke publisher's backs when they decided no more attempted opuses, only slop.
WhiningCoil
Ghost of Quokka's Future
6mo ago
I think I pick up what you are putting down. There was a very weird nu-metal, Lincoln Park themed push in video games circa 2001-2003 ish that really fucked up a lot of games. I think the one that got it worst was Jak 2. But Prince of Persia: Two Thrones, WarCraft III and others didn't escape unscathed. It was all very mass market edginess. Like a fisher price razor blade.
WhiningCoil
Ghost of Quokka's Future
6mo ago
I'd love to hear that thesis about Warcraft 3. I remember from early previews it felt far more RPGish than it turned out and had far more races and campaigns that got cut (they planned 6 didn't they?). But ambitious design documents getting cut back isn't anything new.
WhiningCoil
Ghost of Quokka's Future
6mo ago
Hah. I knew people had some strong opinions around it. Interesting to encounter them in the wild.
I remember loving it and being totally along for it's ride when I first played it. Second time I tried to play it years later, I found it profoundly boring. But I also felt that way about Bioshock as well. Never tried Bioshock 2. One thing that always amused me about criticism I saw of Bioshock Infinite, was that it was a worse Bioshock. But, IMHO, Bioshock was just a "worse" System Shock 2. But that all depends on what you were trying to get out of those games. I thought Bioshock had more imaginative world building than System Shock 2, even if the RPG systems were largely removed. It also had a lot better action. Infinite leaned even harder into action and narrative. There were trade offs.
WhiningCoil
Ghost of Quokka's Future
6mo ago
The state of video games in the year of our lord 2025 continues to astound me. I continue to wonder when the inflection point was, between the ascending art form, and it's degenerate form we see today. Insane stories nobody wants to hear, ugly unlikable worlds, artless current year lampshading, technical issues out the wazoo, "gameplay" that seems to revolve around trying to hook into as many addiction centers as possible and draping casual-tier game mechanics over top of it as a fig leaf. it's a disgrace.
An obvious flashpoint was Gamergate, and that's been beat to death. But before Gamergate, Bioshock Infinite killed the AAA title as it was understood up until that point.
Arguably, Bioshock Infinite was the perfect game. Gamers loved it, reviewers loved it, it was philosophical with something for everyone (except a few wokies who got upset that it depicted both sides as capable of great evil), and most importantly it sold gangbusters. And it still couldn't earn it's money back (allegedly1), the developers basically closed down, reducing in size to a mere skeleton crew that never released another game. I'm struggling to find good sources for it, but I recall this sent shockwaves through the industry. I remember panicked headlines on Gamasutra which I had been reading at the time for some fucking reason. Suddenly everyone was shitting their pants afraid that they'd been shoveling money into a business model (big budget AAA singleplayer games) that would lose them money. And to my memory, this is when the changes began.
Publishers were desperate to do anything but a AAA singleplayer game which would lose money even if it succeeded because it cost so damned much. You saw more games as a service, more DLC, more online requirements, more courting of controversy to make up for obvious lack of quality. Or maybe the woke shit was just a convenient hack to get free publicity and better reviews from a gaming press that Ziff Davis had centralized in San Francisco and then abandoned. Who's to say.
I'm obsessive. I keep a spreadsheet of all the retrogames I aspire to play again, the year they came out, the issue of Computer Gaming World they got reviewed in, which of my stable of retro PCs I should play them on, etc. Around 2015 the list stops. The last game on it is Rebel Galaxy. The last big budget AAA game on it is Borderlands 2 from 2012. I didn't stop at that date because the games weren't retro enough. I stopped because as I was perusing lists of top reviewed or most popular games year by year, that was roughly the time upwards of 80% of them became Games as a Service. Either always online DRM, a multiplayer focus, or even 10 years of perpetual updates chasing "engagement" made them unsuitable for a list oriented towards posterity and nostalgia. Which once again, is more or less right around the time Bioshock Infinite and it's disastrous aftermath was rippling through the industry.
Arguably, Ubisoft has been fighting the good fight. I make fun of Ubislop titles, and their super generic, open world, casual action adventure mechanics. But they are still ostensibly offline big budget single player games. Which really only leaves woke-baiting as a tactic to try to punch above their weight. Alas.
In the 2000's I think it was, Nintendo announced they were no longer going to devalue their games by reducing their prices. It was customary to release $20 versions of games that had sold a bunch. It was easy in the back half of a consoles life to stock up on all the classics pretty cheap, and brand new to boot. Nintendo argued this created a race to the bottom, and quit doing it. People were upset, accused them of being greedy. Gamer entitlement is quite the sight to see. But in the meantime, I think Nintendo was largely vindicated. The first party games that released for the Switch were all 1000% worth the money, especially when compared to the GaaS titles Xbox or Sony were pushing. One again Nintendo is pissing gamers off raising prices. Switch 2 games look to cost $70 or $80, and the console itself is priced at $450. This could be greed. Or like in the early 00's it's Nintendo insisting on being paid what they are worth. Unless you want them to start whoring it up on the corner of Woke & GaaS.
- It's possible in time, 2K recouped the cost of Bioshock Infinite. We don't directly know. They posted losses in their quarterly statement when it came out. Somehow it got cited that the game cost $200m to develop and market, but Ken Levine laughed that off without providing a real number. I do see people remarking that the game went on sale "quickly" whatever that means in 2014, I can't exactly recall. It's supposed to have lifetime sales of 11m, but those are always inflated with giveaways, bundles, massive sales, etc. Were I to guess from smatterings of numbers I see floating around, I'd guess 4-5m at full price in the release window? Which could be 240m in total revenue, minus whatever the retailers took as their cut. So it's not inconceivable that it didn't recoup it's alleged $200m investment inside a reasonable time window.
WhiningCoil
Ghost of Quokka's Future
6mo ago
You know, funnily enough I had Motherload: Goldium Edition as a bin/cue iso in my data hoard after all, and that ran just fine for me. Go figure.
Now that you mention my stable of retro pcs, I probably could. But for whatever reason I have zero attachment to running flash games on period appropriate hardware the same way I do DOS games, or 90's FPS, or even that era where every fucking game had bitchin' EAX effects.
WhiningCoil
Ghost of Quokka's Future
6mo ago
Where'd you get it? Maybe I'll try it and see what happens for me.
WhiningCoil
Ghost of Quokka's Future
6mo ago
I went browsing my data hoard yesterday, and found a bunch of old 2000-2005 era flash cartoons I saved for various reasons. After figuring out how to make them play under linux I enjoyed a smattering of them for about an hour, mostly thanks to nostalgia. I still think Lesko's Revenge is my favorite. I barely remember how I found those things. Maybe 4chan back in the day? Limewire?
Watching them again then though, it does make it hard to keep judging kids so hard for their Skibidi Toilets or whatever.
WhiningCoil
Ghost of Quokka's Future
6mo ago
Alternate comparison! Nearly every country on the face of the earth has tariffs against US goods. It's working out fantastic for them. I regularly read articles about how protectionism is the secret sauce behind China's economy.
Maybe we were the ones pouring gasoline all over our body and lighting the match because the experts told us we have to.
WhiningCoil
Ghost of Quokka's Future
6mo ago
I've mentioned several times here, I've been reading Gibbon's Fall and Decline of the Roman Empire. By Volume 3 and 4 (where I currently am), the citizens of the Western Roman Empire, crushed by taxes and "illiberal edicts" whatever that means to Gibbon or the Romans, were in some proportion somewhere between indifferent and cautiously optimistic for Gothic, Vandal or Frankish rule. Of the Gothic rule in Italy in particular, in some ways and for some time Theodoric was perceived as protecting the glory and the ways of the Italians.
From an intellectual perspective, you read the sequence of events, and it makes a certain neocon "We'll be welcomed as liberators" sort of sense. But as often as that hasn't played out in our age, we know it's not that simple. It's profoundly rare for a peoples to willingly accept a foreign tyranny over a native tyranny. There are usually at least some vague feelings of tribal unity lying around in mothballs to man the lines against the invaders. They won't make slaves out of us! We're already slaves of one of our own god damnit! How completely detached from your ruling class, how utterly neglected is their noblesse oblige before the peoples are willing to trade one slave master for another?
Now I can only speak for myself, but this is the kind of shit that makes me go "Oh, I get it now." The relentless naked blood libel from my "betters" directed towards me is insufferable. If any other country attacked the US with intentions to conquer it, I'd at least be willing to hear them out.
WhiningCoil
Ghost of Quokka's Future
6mo ago
It makes sense when you watch the Twitter/Cable News discourse. The baseless accusation that the government presented no evidence is not in the documentation so that it can hold up in court. It's there so that talking heads on Twitter and CNN can quote those documents angrily and selectively. It's laundering talking points through legal filings.
WhiningCoil
Ghost of Quokka's Future
6mo ago
That last line is, frankly, insane to me given the circumstances. "Yea we knew at the time we deported the guy to El Salvador that it was illegal for us to do it, but it was in good faith!" What is the government's response to having illegally deported someone? Too bad! The government makes a few arguments but here I want to zoom in on a particular one: redressability. Ordinarily in order for a U.S. Federal court to have jurisdiction to hear a case the Plaintiff (that would be Abrego-Garcia, his wife, and his 5 year old son in this case) bears the burden of establishing that an order of the court would redress their claimed injury. This cannot be met here, according to the government, in part because they no longer have custody of Abrego-Garcia and so there is no order the Court can issue as to the United States Government that will reddress their injury. The appropriate entity to be enjoined is the government of El Salvador, over which a U.S. federal court obviously has no jurisdiction.
It's possible in a 2016-2020 Trump Admin, this is an argument I would have cared about. But I literally just lived through an administration that forced me to take an experimental vaccine. Luckily my only side effect (so far) is permanent tinnitus. But the manufacturer is shielded from liability, and so is the government which forced it on me. I mean I guess the supreme court struck down that mandate... but they did so after the deadline by which I would have immediately lost my job, so thanks for nothing. I wouldn't mind some redress. What's my inability to fall asleep because of the ringing in my ears worth?
We just lived through an illegal eviction moratorium. After the Supreme Court decided it was illegal, were any of the people harmed by that offered any compensation? Were the landlords compensated for being forced to house squaters? Or did Blackrock roll up their foreclosed homes?
What about all these federal programs to relocate, house and feed migrants of questionable immigration status, and all the crime and destruction of institutions it caused? Do any of the communities that had hoards of barbarians air dropped on them by the feds get any sort of redress? What about the victims of unquestionably illegal immigrants? People who lost family or were otherwise horribly victimized because the Biden administration just ignored immigration law? Where were all these arguments about "If congress passes a law funding blah blah blah the executive must enforce those laws"? Where were the nationwide injunctions, or the concerns about redress for the victims of illegal alien crime? How was it not a constitutional crisis that uncounted millions of illegal and questionably legal aliens were allowed to invade over 4 years?
This might be bad. But I just can't possibly be made to care. I don't want to hear about "redress" given the profound damage the last administration did completely scot-free. Until I see Fauci behind bars, I'm happy letting ICE run completely amok and plead "qualified immunity" to all of it. Let Trump give them all preemptive pardons. Have them show up at people's doors with those instead of warrants. I don't care anymore. I already saw from 2020-2024 that the law doesn't matter. I'm certainly not going to let arguments about principle matter to me now. This is power politics now baby.
Maybe I read too much into it. That just pattern matched to "millions are suffering and I care like a good person should". And I refute both points. Retirement accounts are not lost in a day unless you sell the bottom like a hysterical woman, and we've seen worse event in recent memory, much less living memory.
More options
Context Copy link