It’s possible (probable, even) but I’m not really sure what the recourse would be there. The EU can’t force Steam to let games onto their platform.

I’m kind of torn on this, really. I do think Steam needs competition, but none of the ones that’ve popped up seem to understand that a lot of the appeal of Steam is the extra features they offer to users, it’s not just a storefront. And to game developers, they offer a lot of free marketing that’s expensive to get outside of Steam. I’d be interested to see studies on how much value the marketing Steam provides brings. If it could be argued that it’s close to the difference in percentage Steam takes vs. other storefronts, I’d have a hard time saying it was unjustified.

Obviously that marketing is so valuable because of the market share Steam has, so if another reasonable competitor who were at least attempting for feature parity for end users, that marketing might come to be worth less, and there’d be a better argument against Steam taking such a large cut.

If it was anyone else putting it together, I think you’d be right, but Musk has a pretty large cult following, and an absurd amount of money to throw at this. If anyone is capable of drawing significant voters to a new party, it’s him.

He wants to be the new Trump. I’m convinced he sees the adoration and unquestioned loyalty Trump gets from the MAGA crowd, and he wants that, too, but he can’t run for president, so this is the best he can muster.

I agree with you, but in this case it’s likely the new party will act as a spoiler against the republicans, so I’m all for it. It might even open the door to a new progressive party splitting the democrat vote without guaranteeing a republican victory.

This is called a Most Favored Nation clause and is not exclusive to Steam, or even particularly uncommon.

Also some absolutely great dialog / voice acting.

“You are WOEFULLY deficient in the ways of etiquette, BUT… you have a point.”

The whole thing is really unfortunate, because we do need more than two political parties, but even if the candidate they put forth is actually great, the fact that Musk is involved will immediately make me assume they’re corrupt as fuck.

Hopefully it’ll act as a spoiler against the republican candidate, opening the door for a progressive party to also form without causing a far-right candidate to get elected.

This reads like he still, even after everything, doesn’t understand how tariffs work.

Yeah, they’ve already placed tons of bets against themselves; own-goals are just lining their pockets.

The city should just put forth a new plan that involves taking those specific homeowners’ land via eminent domain, and using it to install new parking lots or roadways or whatever will fit to accommodate the new requirements.

Hey, this is great!

It’d be awesome to have some cohesive (larger) design this year rather than just adding things as we think of them. :)

I don’t think though, that for the goal of living a happy life, any harm is theoretically necessary.

Whose happiness are we talking about? Surely if one person’s happiness conflicts with someone or something that already exists, they can’t both have happiness and harmlessness. (Also, what are you considering harm? Just harm to people? What about animals? Plants? The planet as a whole?)

Modern human life is inherently very harmful to a wide range of things.

Give that the gilded age was characterized by a massive spike in wages… No. No, we aren’t. Or rather, yes, we are, but only for a very select few people. For the rest of us, we’re entering into a new depression.

If nothing else, we could always make a little collage of everyone’s sonas or favorite characters. Would require everyone to supply their own image, though, and we’d have to get them all sized, arranged, and reduced to the available color palette.

“We’re going to have B-2s and F-22s and F-35s flying right over the White House,” Trump told reporters before flying to Iowa.

God. I know it’s effectively an impossibility, but if there was ever a time I’d love to see the military turn on Trump, this is it.

The definition of DEI, Wokeness, CRT, etc. according to Trump and Republicans in general is “Anything we don’t like” or “Anything we can weaponize against ‘The Left’”.

That definitely has to cause more pollution.

This is what the article is about… They’re basically saying “The fireworks are going to cause hazardous air conditions, stay inside and keep your windows and doors shut, don’t go outside to cook because you’re subjecting yourselves to dangerous levels of pollution.”

Agree with you that fireworks just seem like an unnecessary relic from the past. Plus, in addition to the pollution concerns, they scare the shit out of animals, and can cause fires, especially the ‘backyard’ variety.

Oh my god, that is the cutest thing.

It’s an interesting question, but whose responsibility are you proposing it is to find another actress? Who’s paying that actress? Is the library going to pay twice as much, or is the existing actress expected to work the same amount of time for half the money to accommodate this second actress?

This is great, thanks for this link! Didn’t know this was a thing!