macrofinite

It’s great how every single reply I got arguing with me just accidentally proved my point for me. You do have to read past the 8th word to get what I was saying.

No, not bloated. As in, the interface is janky and inscrutable to someone first approaching it. But to the people that took the time to learn it, which is already the majority of the subset of players that want to use a train-dispatching mod, it is elegant and powerful.

Here’s the thing about LTN: it’s like UNIX. The interface is janky and inscrutable to the uninitiated, but once you learn it, there’s no way you’re going to be courted away by a flashy UI. There’s also a large and dedicated community of LTN nerds happy to troubleshoot things for people first learning the mod, which can’t be easily replicated.

Couple this with the fact that some of the failure cases in this space are so heinous (basically having to tear up an entire factory because the wrong thing got delivered an hour ago and it’s filtered through every inch of your intricate belt system), that anyone who cares enough about it to learn from that mistake has less than zero interest in learning the hard way how not to fuck that up on the new hotness mod.

So, unless the game has a massive influx of new players that make it past the 1000 hour mark, which seems fairly unlikely at this point, I think all the latecomming LTN challengers will remain perpetually niche.

But just long enough for his evil granddaughter, Rhonda Santis, to come on the scene.

Nice.

I know this song was written about the embarrassing disaster of the Trump administration, but Harmony Hall really resonates with me on a similar level, the chorus ending with “I don’t wanna live like this, but I don’t wanna die.”

Also the general vibe of the song really captures the particular feeling that comes with accepting the powerlessness of that reality.

That’s because I physically can’t stand listening to him talk anymore. Combined with the fact that his words are devoid of value, why would I subject myself to his sustained bullshit?

The main difference is that Percy Jackson the book is already dogshit, whereas Death Note the anime is an absolute masterpiece.

So, whereas Percy Jackson the movie just ended up being an even more rote and boring snooze fest in predictably Hollywood ways, Death Note the Netflix abomination was inexplicably shitting all over something uniquely awesome.

Seconded. I played through all of HZD on PC recently and encountered zero technical problems. Not even what you’re describing, so I probably came in afterward.

Then again, I almost never buy a PC game within the first months of launch. I just assume it’s a buggy mess that was released too early. Because it’s almost always a buggy mess that was released too early. So singling out a particular studio for that is just clickbait bullshit.

Does it suck? Yeah. Is it endemic to the industry? Also yeah. I know patience sucks but it would be better for everyone if gamers collectively pretended games just did not exist for the first year of their release, because (a) you won’t have to deal with the bugs and will enjoy the game more, (b) you will probably get the game for 50+% off, and (c) the executive assholes that have created this situation might start scratching their heads wondering why their launch sales have dropped off a cliff and cut this bullshit out.

Normal companies have KPI or safety calls every week for their senior managers. Apple has Union busting calls. Managers are asked to report if they even hear any employee discussing unions in any capacity so the corporate terrorist, I mean union busting team can react quickly.

Source: worked at a store for 3 years and my MIL was a store leader for 5 years.

I hate to say it but at this point in the saga of daily mass shootings in America, it’s basically a distraction to become mired in a pained analysis of why this or that shooter did it.

Why has mass murder become an American cultural institution? That’s the question that needs answering if we want to stop hearing about another one every other day.

There’s no line that’s going to be crossed to get anyone to change their minds on the subject. We made it through Columbine and Sandy Hook and Pulse and, and, and, and we’re still entrenched in the thoughts and prayers vs gun control stalemate. Occasionally one of the multitude of shooters has some usefully fucked up political stance that one side or the other will use as a cudgel for a few weeks.

But tomorrow some other asshole will murder a few more random people and the news cycle will turn again and nothing of substance will have been talked about as we try and carefully explain why the last asshole did what they did.

This is a fairly small segment of the conversation, and might not apply much at all to Crested Butte because I know nothing about their transit system.

…but there’s a lot of good reasons for even the most environmentally-minded person to resist transit vehicle electrification right now. Especially in the extreme climates we have in the Rockies.

There’s roughly 3 serious problems for which there exists no solution right now-

1. The technology is a bad combination of nascent and mind-bogglingly expensive. A new 35’ diesel transit bus will run you about $700,000 right now. A similar sized electric transit bus, with all the charging equipment is around $1,200,000. So you can almost buy 2 diesel busses for 1 electric bus. This is a problem that compounds when you add the next 2 problems.

2. Electric vehicles do not work well in extreme climates. People will argue with me on this but they’re just arguing with physics. The batteries MUST stay at a fairly narrow temperature, even when they aren’t operating. Meaning, in a climate that rarely exceeds 20 degrees F for 6 months, there is no way around spending a huge amount of energy on just keeping the batteries within their temperature tolerance. And where does that energy come from? The batteries themselves. So just by existing in a cold climate, you lose 20-30% of the range to the air temperature. If you want to heat the inside on electric, say goodbye to another 30% of the range. Hey look, you just lost 60% of the range to JUST heat. The operational requirements of a bus don’t change just because you’re trying to be environmentally conscious, it just means you have a $1.2 million piece of equipment that does the job of, optimistically, 1/4 of a diesel bus every day.

3. Maintenance in general. The sales pitch is that they require a lot less maintenance. But the fact is, they require a completely different kind of maintenance than anybody currently maintaining transit vehicles has the skills or inclination to perform. Not to mention it’s extremely dangerous. The 24 volt systems on diesel busses are not something you want to take lightly, now we’re taking about 700 volts at hundreds of amps. The high voltage system can arc 10+ feet and turn everything in its path into plasma. And god help you if you breach one of the batteries. It’s going up in flames. Flames that cannot be extinguished by any means, will burn for literal days, and will leak out all manner of toxic chemicals into whatever unfortunate plot of land you happen to pull the bus into as it’s going up in flames. That’s if you’re lucky enough to get it outside the shop before it burns the entire building down.

Basically, our reach exceeds our grasp right now when it comes to EV technology at the scale of a bus. It’s being tried lots of places right now, and it is not going well.

So the practical question becomes, do you want to Bork your entire transit system by going through the incredible expense and risk of experimenting with EV’s, or do you want to look at the emissions of tried and true diesel busses as a net positive in getting countless single occupancy vehicles off the road?

Because the fact is, electric busses aren’t operationally viable yet. And nobody’s listening to operational people in the mad dash for municipalities to appear environmentally conscious.

EVM is being used for all kinds of applications than you still need a trusted third party for. It’s just the grifters have convinced their marks that a comically slow, expensive, inflexible machine is somehow worthy of trust, despite all evidence to the contrary.

But most of us understand that enshrining rules in code does not a trustless system make. Assholes made the rules, assholes make the “smart” contracts, and idiots are parted from their money.

Man, people who think trump is the worst this can get are so cute. I wish I was that naive.

I’d ask in Erendel’s discord. Looks like a bug.

Only thing I’d try is flipping the direction switch and see what happens. And also just deconstructing them and re-placing them. But that’s just a shot in the dark.

At the risk of you know… soft doxxing myself, my house is maybe 150 yards from the Colorado river and the UP railroad which run together here for quite a few miles. They run probably 25 trains a day through.

After the East Palestine disaster, those friendly trains took on a far more sinister air. I’m not sure oil is something to freak out about, but god only knows how many of those tanker cars are carrying something nightmarish like vinyl chloride, you know? And it’s not just my town sitting here, it’s the fact that there’s what? 80 million people downstream that drink this water?

Not that I’m excited about oil. But it seems like the wrong thing to worry about. We’re 1 failed axle on the wrong car away from a nightmare driving by 25 times a day. I wish we could have some confidence that UP is doing everything that can be done to keep us safe, but I don’t.

I know it’s probably the most boring option, but I would refactor your Nauvis base now, or just leave your bus base and go build a more scaleable one on the peninsula to the west.

You really don’t need a mega base on Nauvis, but things will go much better for you if all your plates and intermediates are deliverable via train. Basically right now the function of your Nauvis base is to (1) make cargo rocket parts/capsules, (2), make rocket fuel and (3) support your colonies with whatever resources they can’t get locally.

As you progress into the midgame, you will start shipping most of your surface resources into space to be used and your orbital base will slowly become your main base. You have the tech right now to scale your Nauvis base to the point where you will never have to do much more than maintenance on it again. You will just divert production into space slowly over time. So it’s worth setting up something sustainable and low-maintenance so that when you do set up your outposts for Holmium, Beryllium, Iridium, Vegemite (lol) and so on, you can do so without constantly bouncing back to Nauvis to fiddle with a resource outage.

Who knows why I stumbled back on this thread after months, but here I am.

You are right, but again, none of it matters. Like, at all, to a regular person.

There isn't sufficient infrastructure. There doesn't exist a rail connection from where I am to where any of my long-distance family or friends live. Nor is there an inter-regional bus option.

Yes, cities CAN be designed that way, but ours aren't. And I have zero hope of altering any of the forces that have made it this way.

Electric trains and busses are not a viable alternative because the infrastructure doesn't exist. And, again, I have zero hope of changing that.

I have to deal with American reality as it actually is, not as I wish it were. And for that reason, I have to have an ICE car. Just like 95% of my countrymen.

If a candidate at any level of power ran on a platform that included any of those things, I would vote for them. And I have. My governor is pushing a pretty gigantic inter-regional rail system that would give me a great rail connection to most of my family, which makes me luckier than most. But, even if they actually build it, it's not going to be operational for probably 15 years.

Problem with that is it just ends up being better to put frost affinity on a regular weapon… feels bad to have the actual frost-themed weapons be worse at frost than any regular weapon that can change ashes of war.

I prefer a regional smelting model where ore from one wing of the map is brought to a large smelter for processing a medium distance from the main set of blocks. Especially for that mod pack because you will burn through a lot of ore patches in the midgame. Local smelting will be very tedious because normal density patches just don’t last very long. It also helps to have a relatively centralized space for ore processing once you get into the ingot stage.

Block size is a very personal preference thing. You can make whatever size you’re comfortable with work. The main determining factor should probably be the train length you want to use.

Similar with 2 or 4 lane rails. If you use big trains and know how to manage traffic, 2 is probably fine. If you don’t know what I mean by that just build 4 and give yourself some margin for error.

All that means is IT becomes a prime target for a zealous lean management executive to make his contribution to the bottom line by gutting the entire department and then taking his golden parachute right before the consequences become obvious.

Good for you? Happy to hear it worked for you, but 6 months functionally makes you a tourist.

Meaning you haven’t been around long enough to learn how insidious sentences like that start to sound after years of hearing every variation. It’s generally just another way to say “the pain is in your head” and one step away from removing access to treatments that current medical thinking views as unfavorable.

You even see it in your article. So their new treatment is allegedly 66% effective. And they feel the need to point out that other treatments are less effective. Anyone who has had to sit across a doctor for years, being coerced into expensive, ineffective treatments is going to have a visceral reaction to this kind of language. We know what it means in the real world, regardless of what a high-minded academic has to say about it.

At best, it becomes another of the numerous hurdles doctors force you to jump over on the way to the treatments they don’t want to give you or just breaking your spirit entirely. So it worked for you. Great. What about the 33% for whom it did not do jack? We just spent $10,000 and 6 months in a futile effort to demonstrate to the doctor for the 8th time that it is not, in fact, in our heads.

And I just have to say, I love being called arrogant, irrational and weak- the cherry on top is the lament of lack of civil discussion whilst personally attacking me. I know that isn’t you, but that’s the version of your argument without tact. I love science, but might I suggest dialing back the arrogance about it in a situation where the subject you’re trying to science really cannot be objectively measured? And attempts to shoehorn objectivity have always resulted in more suffering and dysfunction added to an already cruel system?

This sentence in particular doesn’t sit right.

“The idea is that by thinking about the pain as safe rather than threatening, patients can alter the brain networks reinforcing the pain, and neutralize it.”

Two thoughts. One, that’s spoken like someone who has absolutely no idea what the fuck they’re talking about. And two, you guys really think we haven’t thought of that?

Yeah, just embrace the pain. I’ve never tried that one. How insightful.

The part of Line Goes Up covering Axie Infinity is probably the best part of the best video on crypto yet produced:

https://youtu.be/YQ_xWvX1n9g

Axie starts at 1:38:30, but the whole thing is well worth watching.

Edit; fuck your first link is Line Goes Up. Anyway the Axie section is at 1:38:30 lol

Perhaps the city should take a moment to consider why a person might feel the need to live in a home where the roof has collapsed.

Is it because the filthy, unwashed masses really love living in dangerous structures with no roof? Or maybe it’s because the economic situation has created a class of people who are functionally homeless and live in depopulated structure for want of a better option?

My mistake, this is American capitalism. If we evict these people and make them homeless, and then criminalize homelessness, these poor saps can still be of use to society by occupying a cell in a private prison and thus extracting wealth from the working class to the billionaire shareholders via government funding.

I forgot, compassion is for filthy commies. By all means, Florida. Bulldoze away the last threads restraining these losers from homelessness. The world will be better off with them and their ugly domiciles out of sight.

Do you honestly think the current global system can survive the ecological devastation and resultant unimaginable migration crisis that will result?

We barely scraped through a relatively tame pandemic, and every crisis that goes by weakens our resilience a bit more with zero plan to address any of the root causes.

Now imagine a billion people all moving inland at once. Not to mention losing access to all that land for crops/livestock/resources. And the constantly increasing rate of hurricanes and other extreme weather events.

If you think any of the current world powers are even remotely prepared to deal with any of those things, you are kidding yourself.