My guy, we didn’t have widespread death squads or a third world war last time. What do you mean you couldn’t imagine a worse disaster than the first four years?

Plenty of people are toeing the line for starting a revolution (which will in fact be a second civil war), but no one has followed anyone who’s crossed it. I’m convinced that it’s going to get ALOT worse before it gets better.

I mean, we can point at the legal system, but as you said, casinos just find new loopholes to circumvent the law. Ultimately, Valve is the group with the power to remove any gambling-adjacent mechanics from their games, but they have been pretty flaccid regarding changes because they know that they will lose money from it.

Crackdowns won’t stop the gambling on CS, legislation and enforcement won’t change it, but making items non-tradeable, or damaging item value or appeal through any method, can stop the gambling - but at the cost of CS’s financial success and overall appeal.

It’s a bit weird (skip to 10:41 for specifically the pay system)

Gonna piggy back off this to drop a decent summary from coffeezilla about valve’s lootbox gambling problem that Valve has consistently dodged responsibility on. It’s really not new news but folks should be informed/reminded of it nonetheless.

I don’t watch CoffeeZilla in any large amount, but this pretty well sums up the situation in this instance.

JPEG XL (JXL) seems promising, being able to do a fair amount of compression while keeping images still high quality.

The showcase webpage for JXL.

A third option is to train with a gun buddy and buy one when you feel it is definitely needed. no major financial burden, and you get firearms training.

Article in question. AP news has like 5 articles all about this single investigation.

The ‘unrelated charges’ were possessing fake IDs and an unregistered firearm.

Some hikes shouldn’t be done alone.

Also this seems like it’s gearing you towards selfish thinking which can set you up to be more isolated and lonely as a person.

I gear towards joining in things that others I like the company of want to do. I get to hang out with them while doing some activity, and they get to enjoy that activity. Of course, if I’m going to invite someone to something, it’s most often going to be something I can enjoy myself. If it requires others I just check with my friends on who’s interested and do followups with them to reduce barriers and increase their chances of making it.

Mmm, nihilism juice. My favorite!

are you angus?