In Westminster-like systems, I believe this would be loss of supply, where it’s expected to trigger an election. It seems to work well as an incentive for governments to do their bloody job, but I’m sure they would find a way to abuse or ignore it.

Can you imagine if MS did say something, and Trump immediately decided to replace all their products in government with Apple alternatives? You know he would.

I saw people asking for ships you can walk around in for a long time now, but I never saw the appeal. With this update, I get it. These ships really feel like our own, and they didn’t hold back the creative potential. I’m already building a flying restaurant.

It was a very basic story with a self-insert character, probably intended for a younger audience. That worked very well for me at the time. I think it was my first RPG so I really enjoyed getting lost in those environments.

I always wondered why Secret of Mana gets the attention, and Evermore is largely forgotten. It has a doggy companion!

Hey, in a setting like Night City, beating people unconscious to spare their life practically makes you a saint.

If you really want to ease your conscience, I don’t think they ever explain how non-lethal weapon mods work. You can head-cannon that your assault rifle is loaded with nanites that safely shut down enemy cyberware if you want.

I believe it’s possible in Cyberpunk 2077. Blunt weapons are non-fatal, other weapons can be modified to be non-fatal, stealth is usually an option, and you can even remotely disable enemies if your hacking skill is high enough.

There are sections you can’t do alone, so you might need to be proactive about neutralising enemies before your companion does.

Lots of technology has reached a good-enough plateau, so I think we’ll start to see some left-field ideas. I’m just going to say realistic robot pets.

Plan some rest stops in advance, about every two hours. A few minutes of looking at the scenery and fresh air can help a lot with alertness. Even better if it’s quiet enough for a power nap.

You just reminded me that pineapple upside-down cakes were a common thing in the 80’s. At least where I was. What happened to those?

Typically just fried on the grill with the patty, bacon, and onion.

I suspect Corporate Memphis is partly successful because it works with ambiguous skin colours, so it automatically ticks diversity boxes without the artist having to think too hard about representation.

My prediction is that the successor will double down on that. I hope it’s cartoony style anthropomorphic animals.

It’s the shape of things, too. They have no character.

I was shopping for door knobs recently, because all the knobs in this house are spherical and smooth. They’re impossible to grip. We have a disabled person in the house who struggles to turn them. Gloves slip right off.

At the hardware store is an entire aisle full of doorknobs, but nearly all of them are the exact same smooth spherical shape. The rest were ugly rectangular lever styles that work but look very industrial in a home that’s mostly natural textures.

Somehow all these brands, finishes, locking features, price ranges, dozens of product variations, and literally only two doorknob shapes. Both so minimalist as to be almost impractical.

I had to settle for the lever style for one door, and just put grip tape on the others.

I recently had to get a new card cancelled and reissued because it was sent to an old address. I definitely updated my address with that bank, but it didn’t stick.

I’ve updated my address with other companies and later found that different parts of their system kept different addresses.

Not too long ago I even worked on the address changing section of a finance company’s website. That project was a nightmare, and I learned a lot about why address changes are much harder to implement than you would think.

I really wanted to spend more time ironing out edge cases on that one, but I was under a lot of pressure to get it delivered because some genius had already committed to removing the forms we already used for this.

So basically it’s possible this person did change their address, at least for some things with that bank, and fixing it might not be something they can do without just the right specific instruction. As long as the bank can demonstrate a good faith attempt to do it right, they are legally covered. Sometimes it’s cheaper to compensate for very rare customer losses that result in edge case fuckups, than to pay developers what it would take to fix it properly.

Perhaps you have to experience it from the outside. It’s hard to put my finger on, but there’s a noticeable difference in how Americans see race.

Here in Australia we’re quite diverse, but within a generation people tend to act very similarly, regardless of background. There are still differences, and they should be celebrated, but I’d say we have more in common as just Australians. There’s a tipping point where what’s most important is either a common national identity, or ethnic identity. It feels like we are just barely on different sides of that line - which is funny because Americans are more into overt displays of patriotism.

For example, we won’t claim to be Irish because our grandparents were. That’s probably the most common differentiator.

That said, racism exists here like everywhere else, and is a problem. That may be a different discussion though, because it’s the minority.

You know what… the more I think about, it shouldn’t be any different between our countries. But it’s an impression everyone seems to have so there must be something to it. Maybe it’s because the United States is relatively insular? It means the differences within your country are more significant. Australians have a lot of interaction with other nationalities (tourism is an important industry and we love to travel) so our national identity becomes more significant, because that’s what we’re often representing. Europe would be similar with its relaxed borders.