NFTs get a bad rap because they’re a wasteful, unnecessary re-implementation of things that already exist and also aren’t that hard to do. The blockchain is essentially a Randian fever-dream. It is a marginally novel use of technology that creates unregulated facsimiles of vital elements of public life, with the…

It’s galling to watch all of Gamestop’s “pivots,” from going all-in on used games/consoles, to upping the ante to phones and stuff, to being primarily a place to buy Funco Pops, and now to being Amazon, but worse and with no digital distribution platform to speak of.

It’s funny, because I also chose Charmander. And at the time 10 year old me did essentially understand type weakness/resistance, at least in a kind of basic, intuitive way. So when I struggled against Brock and ate absolute shit against Misty, I wasn’t ignorant as to why I was having so many issues.

So, ultimately this boils down to one thing: Rail in the US is and always has been private. Now, back when the absolute fastest way to move goods was by train, and you could get a shitload of land rights by putting track all over the place, there was a huge boom of railroad building, for mostly obvious reasons.…

This is an idea so incredibly bad and dumb that labor, capital, and academia are all lined up looking at it going “the fuck kinda bullshit is this?”

The US rail network is decades behind the times in terms of signaling and switching. Countries like Japan have fully electronic implementations that remove the need for human beings to be fully in the loop for that stuff. Now, there’s still monitoring of the larger network and all that, but basically the switching and…

This is just some Hyperloop-style grift bullshit.

Isn’t a carbonated martini basically an un-sweet Tom Collins?

I’m going to leave aside the notion that there’s “economic value” in the concept of artificial scarcity, which is transparent market manipulation.

I do get where you’re coming from, but I’m not sure there’s a ton of daylight between a purpose-built race car that gets a 500-car “production” run for homologation and a purpose-built race car.

If I have to quit FFXIV because of NFT bullshit I'm going to be very sad.

Cryptocurrencies and NFTs are nonsense, thus the hate. Whether or not they’re “here to stay” is beside the point. 300 years ago you could have said that about chattel slavery, but that didn’t make it a good idea.

That’s the thing about a collective bargaining deal: it can be whatever the union negotiates for. SAG, for example, establishes certain minimum levels of pay, workplace safety, benefits, etc, but obviously the average SAG member is not making, say, Matt Damon money.

Yeah, always good to catch up with Sang-Wing.

But they don’t actually provide ownership, they provide a receipt. There’s nothing stopping people from getting the exact same thing basically for free. Sure, I guess in the future Twitter could prevent you from uploading a profile picture without a valid token, but if they did it wouldn’t be driven by a principled…

It’s good that you remember the years from 2011 to 2016, but I’m not sure that’s the golden age you think it was. Sure, there wasn’t a hot-tub meta, but there was still on-stream cleavage, and the associated endless complaining from puritanical “gamers” who were presumably offended that a woman appeared on screen…

Because it often takes more than a single creator to make a comic book.  As Image has grown, it’s acquired support staff of artists, writers, designers, etc. who are now attempting to unionize.

Yeah, maybe those cyclists had it coming!

God it’s the best mount. Worth it to have a crafter/gatherer class available to do those quests for it. And honestly the whole tribe questline is pretty funny.

Uprooted and Spinning Silver both rule so hard.  I have the first of these two books on my shelf but haven’t yet read it, unfortunately.  I really need to catch up.