What brings you to South Korea?

I think it’s the distinction of whether or not it is voluntary. Buying things is a choice, taxes aren’t (outside of voting for certain political candidates who promise to use taxes in different ways).

A lot of people out there have short-sighted mindsets like “Why do I have to pay for schools when I don’t have any kids?” or “I have my own insurance, why do I have to pay into someone else’s public healthcare too?” People can’t be relied on to make the spending choices needed to support a healthy and stable society on their own, so taxes and public spending make it for them.

To add on to that, not all taxes fund things for the public good. In the US at least, and other countries with large military spending, one must accept that a lot of tax money goes to fund the military industrial complex. Taxes are also used to line the pockets of corporations via bailouts and overpriced government contracts.

Now I also believe there is no such thing as ethical consumption under capitalism, but taxes are nevertheless different from a voluntary exchange of currency for goods and services that one directly benefits from.

Usually services in English will have English (US) and English (UK). Sorry to all the other English-speaking countries out there, though.

Agreed, I think it also hurts the games trying to even have a singular “villain” in the first place. Halo 1-3 had villainous figures, but I don’t think anyone was under the belief that just killing the 3 Prophets would solve the problem of the Covenant, or that killing the Gravemind would mean that the Flood would never be a problem again. The Halo series relies on having compelling factions with clear purpose and ideology to act as antagonists in a more general sense.

The Prometheans in 4 weren’t bad, but outside of the Didact, they had no real purpose or personality. They were just an obstacle. I was really looking forward to the premise of 5 with the concept of going rogue and tackling the underlying themes of fascism at the heart of the UNMC, but then it just rapidly pivoted to some other garbage with Cortana and the Guardians which led to nothing in the end anyways. And so I didn’t even bother to play Infinite.

Do you mean 343/Halo Studios or is 545 some sort of reference I’m missing?

You can!

Worth noting for anyone looking to play both N64 games is that OoT Gerudo stay stunned indefinitely (until the area is reloaded) but the Pirates in Majora’s Mask who are borrowed from the Gerudo guards only stay stunned for a short time before getting back up.

This incentizes use of the Stone Mask, which can be obtained from the invisible guard by giving him a red potion. If playing the N64 version, he is located outside of Ikana Graveyard, which is a place that you can get to at that point in the game but many might not have bothered exploring yet. In the 3DS version, they moved him directly into Pirates Fortress so he’s harder to miss, but it does require just a little bit of stealth to get to where he is first.

Would love to see an IRL version of this placed somewhere public for maximum impact

Which is apparently all the time, especially when people are looking for ice cream.

Am I crazy or are the shades of blue in the key of that graph completely different from the shades of blue in the graph itself?

Nothing says legitimate like some weird AI generated images.

So were Native Americans across the US, and yet you also see people today telling them to go back to their own country.

Nothing makes sense, but it doesn’t have to in a post-truth world.

I 100% get where you’re coming from.

At the same time, it only took one guy with one style of mustache that plenty of other people were using to ruin it for everyone else.

Why are the two Os written in two different styles? AI gen?

Oh it took me a second but I see what they were getting at with it being spelled out:

Puta tu es, “whore you are” in Spanish.

The people you’re messaging might, though.

I just think it stopped being a good deal the moment they implemented their first price increase. That signalled that they’re willing to do what every other subscription service does and raise prices as arbitrarily high as people are willing to pay, with the enticement being that once you’re in deep enough, you can’t unsub or you’re left with no games.

If you have copious time for gaming and are always on the hunt for sometbing new, is it still a better deal than buying every game at release? Sure, at least for now. But the patient gaming strat at least gives me a backlog of affordable titles too long to finish them all, and I can also return to it at any time without worrying about titles eventually disappearing from a subscription catalog.

Same here in Massachusetts back in 2020.

It’s not necessarily a GOP vs Dem issue, it’s dominant parties worried that giving voters more choice will weaken their control.

The universe where her real name is Kasumi

Johto, Hoenn, and Sinnoh too.

Each has real-world analogs. Kanto is the literal Kanto region of Japan, Johto is Kansai, Hoenn is Kyushu, and Sinnoh is Hokkaido.

I’m honestly surprised people still have it.