The sad thing about Oblivion is that there are in-game books in Morrowind and previous games that describe the empire as being in the middle of a bamboo jungle. The vibe comes off as the Roman Empire in South East Asia.
Instead we got generic high fantasy with the occasional guy wearing Roman armor.
Only as far as storyline and setting go. Other than that, it was an okay shooter.
Cutting costs and laying people off makes the books look slightly better (more cash on hand) which makes the stock price jump, which is all these ghouls want because they’re going to sell off on the high, and then bail out.
That’s not how it works. Making money today is the only thing these ghouls care about, ruining a company or brand is just dandy because they won’t be holding the bag when it bursts. They’ll have passed it to someone else. Someone else who will then work to gut the company even more before selling it to someone who will gut it and close it down.
And nothing of real value will have been made, but lots of rich asshats will be slightly richer.
They aren’t on the same level of fraudulent bullshit, but they’re close.
Fingerprint matching is done “by eye” and often involves an “expert” saying that one smudge is a 100% match for another smudge.
DNA matching is the only forensic science that’s worth a damn, and only if it’s done correctly.
I actually say the cheapest option is buying a good quality Safety Razor, and then packs of blades for pennies each.
It’s how I’ve shaved for years, and I’m never going back to the multi blade bullshit disposables.
Adli’s beer is usually locally sourced. I lived in Columbus OH for a time, and the selection was actually pretty good (depending on season).
I’ve also seen Aldi stock horrible beer, both in Columbus and elsewhere.
I see most of the people in the comments here have older model heat pumps.
Newer model heat pumps are quite a bit better than even ones made 10 years ago.
My dad had one put in two years ago for his garage kitchen, and it’s worked quite well, even in fairly cold temperatures. Most importantly, that heat pump doesn’t have an auxiliary mode, and yet it still works in sub freezing temperatures.
It would work even better if it were ground source, but those are both expensive and require digging up the yard.
2; Some buzzwords that you don’t seem to understand the meaning of, with some conspiracy theory nonsense thrown in.
3; yup. US history is full of horrible shit, but we’re trying to be better. Well most of us. China is not trying to be better.
The US once engaged in genocide, and China is using that past to justify several ongoing genocides.
The US has often failed to fully live up to its ideals of freedom and equality, and China uses that to justify not having any freedom or equality.
The US holds freedom of speech as sacrosanct, often to the point where harmful ideologies are given platforms, China uses secret trials to jail people for the study of their own heritage.
The point being, China fucking sucks for anyone who isn’t a rich, ethnic Han, flawlessly loyal to the CCP.
Harvesting prisoner organs to give to the wealthy/party members.
Executing people for things they’ve said.
Quartering party loyalists in Uyghur homes, particularly the forced co-habitation of Uyghur women with male party loyalists.
The list goes on because China is a totalitarian dictatorship, and the US, for all its many, many, faults, is not.
The main difference is that the US is mostly trying to be better, and China is actively embracing the crimes against humanity.
Generally, dictatorships are called regimes. Thus, China certainly qualifies as a regime.
Hell, the actual dictionary definition is as follows;
Regime, noun;
A government, especially an oppressive or undemocratic one.
Bluesky isn’t exactly a twitter clone, it’s what Jack wanted Twitter to pivot to, but the board of directors refused to play ball.
So Jack spun up a separate entity and explicitly made it its own thing outside of twitter.
There was a study linked around somewhere in the last few days that said that political ideology was a greater factor in people’s religious choices than the inverse.
There are dozens of us.
I really don’t think you played New Vegas much if you think it wasn’t about exploring and finding new shit all over the place.
Fallout 3 had the quest hubs. Also, the fact that water was super important to the story, but aside from one beggar, no one seemed to care about it much.
But New Vegas, well, everyone wanted power from that dam.
It comes down to, what do they eat? Fallout 3, nothing. NPCs don’t eat, so there’s no need to actually put that into the game, and since that part isn’t in the game, a lot of other shit likely isn’t.
New Vegas, they have farms and ecology and all sorts of other shit, and it’s all over the place.
The main issue with the pre-war food is that it’s been 250+ years. Sure, you might find a cache or two, but overall, it will have been scavenged already.
The honest truth is, food and water sources for anyone in the capital wastes was never seen as important to the writers of the story, So it was cut. Well, it was cut if it was ever written at all in the first place.
The story of Fallout 3 is very linear. Which means that it can be tightened up and polished, and it was. But if you go even a little bit off the rails, it starts showing cracks that are immersion breaking.
New Vegas didn’t have that fully polished main story. Instead, it had a polished game world. One that felt alive and vibrant.
It’s the reason why people have x amount of time playing Fallout 3, and three or four times that amount playing New Vegas.
Evidence of farming, or any food source for the NPCs shows that the makers of the game were actually thinking about the world as a livable space.
Fallout 3 devs were just thinking about a world where the story happens, nothing more. And it often shows. You run into little immersion breaking moments, especially if you go too far off the rails. Stay on the rails and it was a solid game.
New Vegas had devs who really paid attention to the details of the world, and if you went off the rails, it became an amazing game.
New Vegas is a better game. And I mean that in the sense that you can go more places and interact with the story and setting in more ways in New Vegas. Also, what do they eat? Fallout 3? unknown. New Vegas? you see corn fields and such all over the place.
In Fallout 3, the NPCs have no existence beyond their part in the highly scripted story. You choices in game don’t matter at all in the way the story ends.
New Vegas has little bits and pieces of setting and backstory for random NPCs that you might never meet, and the story can be completed in different ways, your choices matter.
Guardians 3 was good.
Mostly because they weren’t trying to shoehorn future movie plot setups into it.
On that note, the Holiday Special was also pretty good.
Shang-Chi wasn’t a bad movie… Not one I’m likely to rewatch much, but a good popcorn movie…
Other than that, no Marvel has started falling into producer interference mode, where every movie must explicitly set up the next, even if they don’t have a full plan for what’s next.
They’ve lost sight of the key to their success; telling a tight, self-contained story made by people who love the characters.