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Unfortunately you can’t just recuse yourself from society. You’re still impacted by who the president is even if you don’t vote for them.

You’re still using public utilities. Driving on public roads. Interacting with people who went to public schools.

Acting like both choices are the same because they will always eventually do something you don’t like is disingenuous and you know it.

Same, I was averaging 5~10 fights per long rest by the end of the game because I was trying to efficiently swap people out depending on who was low on health or spells, or use whoever I thought would have the most relevant dialogue for the quest(s).

My default roster was usually either Shadowheart, Gale and Laezel or Karlach, Wyll and Astarion. I was playing an archer sniper ranger so I basically always had two melee, one caster blaster and me as DPS and CC through arrows. I actually really liked the arrow system to give bow users more utility and if I ever run a campaign I’d like to adopt that. I’d make them cheaper though.

I never got to actually use Halsin. I tried to swap him in several times and it just never worked, then he was killed via plot events in act 3 via a mechanism where I could not save him. I used Jaheira a bit in late act 3, just for the Harper & Minsc stuff, not much after that. Never used Minsc, too much overlap with me, Laezel and Karlach.

I found both Wyll and Gale pretty frustrating, but that’s likely because I was trying to be so conservative on rests.

Don’t know how people have already run through 3+ times, I spent like 150 hours on my first run and saw probably 85% of the game… also the ending was pretty disappointing. I’m not itching to dive back in but I’d be interested in DUrge as well as interacting with Minthara more.

I had no idea the crucible was even usable for that, wasn’t telegraphed at all. I found the buff/debuff to be infuriatingly inconsistent and eventually the lava mechanic just broke altogether and the only way to leave that zone was to fast travel out of it, and I could never return.

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The match to the mat is really nice!

Also if a quick Google result is anything to go on, Apple sells hundreds of millions of iPhones a year. 3% of that is still a fuckload of people and IMO proves there is a market for it. Just maybe not a market that needs yearly attention. You also have to remember that’s split between tons of SKUs, so you would expect all of them to hover in the single digits to low teens.

I got my wife a 12 Mini - she loves it. The battery life is absolutely the worst thing about it, but it sounds like the 13 Mini was a huge upgrade in that regard and I had hopes it would continue to get better with future versions.

Something else that may not be taken in to account - the kinds of people buying the Mini are I would wager on a longer upgrade period than the kinds of people who buy e.g. a base iPhone or Pro model. The kind of person buying a Mini I would bet is closer to the kind of buyer that has historically bought the SE - they probably only upgrade every 3 or 4 years rather than the more stereotypical 2. Pro numbers are also skewed by the hyper fans who upgrade yearly and therefore show up in the stats a lot more, even though they’re both a firm Apple customer.

There is also this interesting note at the end of the article:

“Other reports … overwhelmingly presented the same picture of low ‌iPhone 14‌ Plus sales, to the extent that Apple was forced to slash production, suggesting that the low sales of the ‌iPhone 12 mini‌ and ‌iPhone 13‌ mini may not have been caused by the device’s size after all.”

I think the Mini should become the new SE. Keep it on 2+ year old CPU, keep it 60Hz, at least the form factor and design language will match the rest of the lineup unlike now where the SE has a design from 2016. That would be perfect for people like my wife, who want the smallest cheapest phone that’s technically an iPhone, and are only going to upgrade every few years.

I think she is just kinda the default if you have no imagination - softspoken human female that isn’t totally obnoxious.

In terms of female romance options Lae’zel is the only one who it seemed to make sense would be forward enough to try and jump your bones after just 2 or 3 days. Karlach wasn’t even an option for me, she had no romance adjacent dialogue at the tiefling party. I wonder if part of that was just how late she joined up in act 1, I did get her engine “fixed” for the first time but it was one of the last things I did and I can’t remember if it was before or after clearing the goblin camp.

I did really enjoy Shadowheart’s arc though, especially since I generally adopted a policy to not suggest or try to interfere with the companions’ quests. Just left them to their own decisions without trying to sway them, and the fact that Shadowheart chooses to reject Shar and Lae’zel chooses to reject Vlaakith (or at least hear Voss out) made for two of the most powerful moments in act 2 IMO. There is lots to like about all three of them throughout their arcs and that’s part of what makes them so great.

I’m curious about how dielectric grease on the wires is different to 205g0. I’ve always just brushed 205g0 in a thick layer on to the wires and call it good but never tried anything else, and I don’t even really know what to look or listen for to know if I should be doing something different.

I’ve also seen you should use a syringe to inject extra grease in from the top after a few months, but never done that either and curious how important people feel it is.

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The IRS has been saying for years they in many cases don’t actually have the funding to dedicate to fighting multimillionaires who can afford protracted legal battles to avoid taxes. The IRS was granted a lot more funding as part of the Inflation Reduction Act, which is a direct result of the current administration. The government is big and slow though, things take time.

Graphical fidelity has not materially improved since the days of Crysis 1, 16 years ago. The only two meaningful changes for how difficult games should be to run in that time are that 1440p & 2160p have become more common, and raytracing. But consoles being content to run at dynamic resolutions and 30fps combined with tools developed to make raytracting palatable (DLSS) have made developers complacent to have their games run like absolute garbage even on mid spec hardware that should have no trouble running 1080p/60fps.

Destiny 2 was famously well optimized at launch. I was running an easy 1440p/120fps in pretty much all scenarios maxed out on a 1080 Ti. The more new zones come out, the worse performance seems to be in each, even though I now have a 3090.

I am loving BG3 but the entire city in act 3 can barely run 40fps on a 3090, and it is not an especially gorgeous looking game. The only thing I can really imagine is that maxed out the character models and armor models do look quite nice. But a lot of environment art is extremely low-poly. I should not have to turn on DLSS to get playable framerates in a game like this with a Titan class card.

Nvidia and AMD just keep cranking the power on the cards, they’re now 3+ slot behemoths to deal with all the heat, which also means cranking the price. They also seem to think 30fps is acceptable, which it just… is not. Especially not in first person games.

I don’t disagree with your stance, but I am curious why you decided on a trainer instead of picking the easier difficulty. Did you try it and still find it too much? I have read about the differences between modes but haven’t actually tried anything other than normal, and even though I’m extremely familiar with PF 1e and D&D 5e I’ve struggled with lots of encounters.

Prebuilts from brands like Ducky? mechanicalkeyboards.com

DIY kits are generally best bought from their mfg’s - Akko, Keychron, GMMK, Keycult.

More general retailers will have some mix of keycaps, switches, kits, maybe prebuilts and accessories - Novelkeys, Canon Keys, Mekibo, Bolsa Supply (mostly GBs), Vala Supply, KBDFans, KPRepublic (mostly caps), Kono Store, Drop (mostly caps).

To track upcoming and live GBs, at least for keycaps and keyboards - mechgroupbuys.com. It’s pretty dead at the moment but I think the number of active group buys has tumbled recently due to several high profile scandals in the industry (namely Mechs & Co and Rama). Also several major keycap manufacturers piled up huge backlogs during the pandemic that are only just finally clearing up, namely GMK and Milkyway. All of that is causing there to be very few new GBs starting right now, and they can be kind of hard to find unless you’re already in the communities of the designer(s) or refreshing Geekhack.

In the USA licenses are not contingent upon manual vs. automatic. No one checks what car you drive. So you would have to learn somewhere - someone around you has to own a manual car in order for you to learn how to drive one, and here simply no one does. No one in my entire extended family, none of my friends, none of my coworkers I’m friendly with, none of the 50+ cars I have any tangential access to are manual. So even if I wanted to learn, what are my options? Buy an entire car just to learn? Services like Turo won’t let you rent one unless you can drive one already.

We have Driver’s Education in high school but it involves no actual driving - there are separate paid/private courses you can take that might involve defensive driving or learning stick. I did one on controlling skids on wet or snowy pavement and demonstrating e.g. turning under braking with and without ABS. But nothing about manual.

This thread is an amusing display of sample bias. Only people that want to respond yes and brag about it bothering to respond.

In reality only about 2/3rds of people in the US can drive stick and almost no one owns manual cars.

I’ve never driven a manual car. I’ve had people be like “You can’t drive manual?!” and then I would respond “So are you going to teach me?” The answer is always No, of course not, not in their car (assuming they even owned a manual, which none do anymore). My parents had manual cars but sold them 10+ years before having me.

I understand how a clutch works. It wouldn’t be difficult to learn. But what reason or motivation is there to learn when almost no cars are manual? They total something like 2% of new car sales. If you’re buying something like a 718 GT4 RS or a 911 GT3 RS for maximum driving engagement that’s great, but those cars are priced for the 1% of the 1%.

Even if you had a fun car, which I do, the drive to work is stop-and-go, roads are full, even the fun country backroads are filled with traffic on weekends, forests are burned down, gas is eye-watteringly expensive if you have a slightly performant vehicle. The time to have fun driving cars was 40 years ago.

I’ve only played D&D for a couple years and don’t have extensive experience with githyanki lore but my impression is they’re not so much bent on genociding other races as they are exterminating the mind-flayers that enslaved, tortured, and fed on them. Everything about the structure of their society and their philosophy on the value of life hinges around that. They became hyper militaristic - only the strongest and most capable are valued. They seem to regard other races as largely weaker or simply unworthy/uninteresting, but aren’t looking to kill or subjugate them, they’re just irrelevant.

I’m only ~near the end of Act 2, but Laezel’s development has been some of my favorite stuff about the second act.

I will second Durock V2s and TX AP/Rev3 or rev4 stabs. If you use TX make sure you use the “plugs” - the little wheel of snap-off bell-shaped pieces that hold the stab in from behind since they do not screw in.

Also double check your PCB thickness, 1.2mm vs. 1.6mm and make sure you get the right size.

Transistor - really any Supergiant game, but Transistor in particular.