Haha, he nearly passes out when he realizes he crashed the game. That kid is amazing.

Anyone who expected Starfield to win Most Innovative Gameplay, are you offering divination services to the public?

It was an easy call to make. Steam Awards are voted by the public, so it’s all about name recognition.

The other finalists in that category were Shadow of Doubt, Contraband Police, Remnant II, and Your Only Move Is Hustle. Of all these, I had heard about Starfield and Remnant II.

I’m sure some of these games are awesome and I want to check them out by virtue of being finalists, but it was pretty clear Starfield was gonna win on brand recognition alone.

Steam Awards, like any publicly-voted award, is a name recognition contest.

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Not disputing your main point, but they fired CEO John Riccitiello over this.

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Kind of a disingenuous title. Ubisoft is a publisher, yes, but this is specifically about it’s development studio in Montreal. Furthermore, these cuts are in IT, admin, and VFX, and not (so far) in development itself, and certainly not in Assassin’s Creed dev teams, which is clearly their cash cow.

“How dare they show a titty in my murder simulator.”

Better to brush after getting up to remove any bacteria and plaque buildup. And then right before bed, floss+brush.

Yes you can, with one caveat.

According to Stephen Krashen’s input hypothesis, compelling, comprehensible input is sufficient to acquire a language. That means input that you find interesting and that keeps you engaged, and which you can understand at least in part. That evolving sweet spot can indeed take you from complete newbie to fluency without ever speaking.

In my experience, though, being able to speak with other native speakers is a huge source of motivation and creates its own compelling input. So I wouldn’t discount that.

I personally know someone who went from no English to being able to converse just by watching The Simpsons.

I’ve seen people with diabetes unable to quit sugar even though it’s killing them, and THAT sounds like hard drugs to me.

Hang on. You can get blocked by AI for asking what it deems are inappropriate questions?

I’ve played it in January 2022 on PC (so about a year after release), going through a second playthrough on Steam Deck now.

Compared to two years ago, the game is not that different IMO. I enjoyed it immensely the first time, and I’m loving it enough now to just play it again. A lot of very noticeable changes with 2.0, with the entire perks system rebuilt and such. Not a major game changer IMHO but it’s all good stuff.

As for Steam Deck, it’s 100% compatible and looks great. I’ve noticed very few frame rate issues.

I wish people could let go of their resentment towards the game’s launch woes, because this game is a genuine banger with an amazing setting, great gameplay, and a kickass story.

Made it possible to properly switch to Arm cyberware by cycling through weapons.

Oh, haha, I was wondering if I was crazy. The only way I could see to equip the Mantis Blades was to hold Y and select it there. Didn’t feel very intuitive.

I think generalizing the good of human beings to all sentient beings is a great example of how a rigorous ethical discourse can expand traditional morality. The idea of giving rights to great apes is a wonderful example and I hope we can get there soon.

And likewise, a lot of traditionally “wrong” behaviors can be argued to be morally neutral if they don’t really diminish the well-being of human beings. Sex work is another example.

Don’t know if this counts as an ending proper rather than a funny and very rare unintended effect. I doubt the devs planned for it or even realized it could happen.

I think simply put:

Morality is an inherent classification of right and wrong behaviors, often the result of tradition, upbringing, and/or society.

Ethics is a moral system at which one may arrive through philosophy and rational thought.

Ethics tends to define right and wrong in terms of its impact on human well-being, and not just as a inherent sense of right and wrong. As such, it may arrive at conclusions that feel “morally wrong” but actually perpetuate a greater well-being. (One example being utilitarianism.) This is also its danger, as one may argue oneself into a behavior which is rationally ethical but inherently harmful (e.g. eugenics).

The power of ethics is that it can be used to derive moral guidelines for new circumstances, such as AI or global ecological considerations. Such considerations can be derived from morality, but they have a tendency to not truly appreciate new variables and instead attempt to reduce new systems to familiar circumstances, thus often missing nuance.

I’d argue that ultimately, a sound ethical system must be derived from rational ethical thought, gently guided by sound morality as a safeguard against dangerous fallacies.

Haha, I’ve caught plenty of Chinese speakers having what they presume are private conversations in my presence, and sometimes even about me. People just automatically assume non-Asians can’t speak Chinese, even when these non-Asians live in China.

I wouldn’t say we speak in people’s faces, but we make comments to each other about random stuff. I would never say something rude about somebody in their faces, but my spouse might go, “Can we go back to the hotel, I really need to take a shit” or something silly and unfiltered like that.

My spouse and I lived in a bunch of countries over the years. We speak Quebec French, English, and Spanish, as well as a smattering of Chinese, Bulgarian, Korean, and a few odds and ends here and there.

We basically speak whatever we think people around us won’t understand. Very colloquial Quebec French in non-French-speaking countries, Chinese around white people, Bulgarian around non-white people, or even a cryptic mix of everything when we’re not completely sure.

We figure anyone who understands is probably someone we want to know… Hasn’t happened very often, but it does happen. So far we weren’t saying anything overly embarrassing when we got caught, but we sure as hell have no filter between us because of this!