Josh Berry

@ID_AA_Carmack Oddly, I would assume that a rise of non AAA VR games would be more indicative of market success? My mental model being that cheaper games proliferate before AAA is willing to take on that risk?

Whenever I post something critical of Meta’s handling of VR, there are always some old timers that pile on with “Yeah! More AAA PC VR Games is the way to win!”. To be clear — standalone VR was the biggest win that VR ever had, by a huge margin, and Beat Saber was far more important than Half-Life Alyx. Using a PC to drive VR experiences is a boutique niche. Still valuable and definitely worth supporting as a bonus feature, but not something that was going to turn into even console level success, let alone mobile level. The economics of AAA development were never going to be widely brought to bear on a PC accessory. I do think there is opportunity for AAA content to profitably have “VR bonus features”, but not fully designed-for-VR projects at comparable levels of effort.

@paulg This is misguided and betrayed by its premise? If we can measure the federal budget, then that means those departments can be measured by the dollars already. The question is the non dollar impact of each dollar spent. Which is going to be the same as what is of concern here?

DOGE is unlike other government departments in that its performance can be precisely measured. How much smaller is the federal budget next year? If Elon can cut the budget by 5% I'll be impressed.

@br___ian @not_a_hot_girl If it isn't too much, I'd love to hear what you learn rereading.

@not_a_hot_girl @not_a_hot_girl let's read Job then reconvene

Ted Chiang has said that the thing he didn't understand about the Job story is that it doesn't even commit to the bit. The point of Job is ostensibly (and I welcome being corrected here) that you can be virtuous and devout; and horrible things can still happen to you; and the correct action is to accept it and love and praise God—maybe even *because of* rather than in spite of your horrible fate. But then after all that, it undercuts its entire message by actually giving Job a happy ending! Inspired by the book of Job, Chiang wrote a short story called "Hell Is The Absence of God." When I first read it a few years ago, it annoyed and confused me maybe as much as the book of Job confused Ted Chiang. I think I didn't see much point to the story and I quickly moved on to more legibly thought-provoking stories in the collection. But when I read it again a month ago, the story sent me reeling—maybe the way Job affected me when I was a child. I don't know if I can say I "love" the story—it feels uncomfortable and unsettling, a Western koan as @br___ian put it, but that's what is most compelling about it. I have more of an interest in faith, virtue, blessings, karma, the arbitrariness or unarbitrariness of fate, God, and love these days, hence the story holding more interest for me now. But there's also so much beauty and ambiguity and *humanness* in the story that I'm grateful I am able to appreciate now. It's very much worth a read. I would love to discuss it with any of you! (PDF below)

@not_a_hot_girl I hasten to add that I am not a scholar here! I could very well be wrong. :(

basically I need to reread job before I keep tweeting about it lol

@not_a_hot_girl I thought the point of Job was a challenge to the devil's idea that only well treated people were virtuous and devout. The devil got to literally pick who was thought to be the most virtuous and devout to prove it was from lack of misfortune.

@thepondering_ Where is, "yes, but it won't work for us?" :(

"Own the libs!" is MAGA's animating principle: Trump and elected Republicans taunt, bully, mock, troll, and attack with abandon... and are often politically rewarded for it SHOULD DEMOCRATS TRY TO REPLICATE THIS FORMULA and be unrelenting assholes to Republicans?

Best part of this pod is tough to call, but "is this Portlandia?!" is a strong contender.

@mattyglesias Well. That and not carrying water for Trump. The number of sincere posts of concern that predictably feed into the derangement of modern right conspiracies is frustrating.

Crap. Forgot to see how much eggs are.

@tracewoodgrains You are reaping what you actively sowed the other day.

@Noahpinion I confess I am growing more and more of the mind that ketamine is a more powerful explanation for some leader's problems than it should be...

More sex, less ketamine More anime, less politics More rabbits, less social media

@HistoryBoomer Hard to ignore it is the literal top level of MAGA driving a ton of the bullshit out there. :(

Only ten days in. MAGA and progressives going crazy. It's gonna be a long 4 years. Pace yourselves, people!

@BulwarkOnline Another difficult time where you have to get fringe democrats that were making crappy posts. Or the literal leader of the republicans.

REPORTER: “We don't yet know the names of the 67 people who were killed and you are blaming Democrats and DEI policies…Don't you're getting ahead of the investigation?” TRUMP: “No. I don't think so…I think that's not a very smart question.”

@tracewoodgrains @koolerkeith I'll watch and see how things play out. I have grown very frustrated with what seems like constant sane washing of this admin. Fully acknowledging that that sort of frustration leads to biases.

@tracewoodgrains @bananamoat If you want to respond to that post with this idea, sure? But the comment you picked was between president and former secretary. Not vice president. And the context is directly yesterday's accident. Any attempt at changing that is indistinguishable from sane washing.

@bananamoat @tracewoodgrains That scandal is on nobody's radar. The deflection was literally from blame on this specific crash. Literally a response to unhinged shit from the president which is largely "DEI BAD." To see it met with sanewashing... is frustrating.

I don't think he's claiming the ATC hiring scandal directly led to this crash? It may ultimately have, but to my knowledge we don't currently know if it was a traffic control error at all. On the other hand, that scandal remains a problem, and Buttigeg is deflecting from it by implying that *Trump* is responsible for the crash for, a week prior, cancelling an advisory committee on airport security. That's patent nonsense.

@tracewoodgrains That is as may be, but you are still agreeing that it is DEI that responsible for the crash yesterday. Even as someone that isn't a huge fan of DEI, that feels off. At the least, it causes me to reread the room in a way that isn't favorable to the room.

@justalexoki The notes are an active form of thinking?

why would you ever take notes of code? it makes no sense

@mattyglesias I recall, at the time, that the biggest thing hurting a lot of this discussion was just how much seemed to be a bunch of misogynists and racists trying to amplify a message. Is a lot like what hurt marijuana when the biggest proponents were largely drug addicts.