The big jumps in spending on that graph started in 2012. Occupy Wallstreet protests were in the autumn of 2011.

A Blu-ray release would still be giving money to Amazon, since it's their production, though...?

gameplay didn't evolve

Massive understatement. The PS5's biggest titles were remakes and direct sequels. Coupling it with the "upgraded" versions of PS4 games like Ghost of Tsushima, Last of Us Part 2, and GTA5, even the marketing seemed to boil down to "This is just a really nice PS4."

Yeah, my wife has historically loathed JRPGs in part because the turn-based combat was too dull. She tried Expedition 33, fell in love immediately, and tried to show me the combat system like, "Look! It's so new and innovative! This is how all those old games should've been!"

...So I'm putting Barkley Shut Up & Jam Gaiden on her computer next time she leaves it unattended.

The real move is to say your name and phone number at the start and end of the message, that way if they need to pay it again because they didn't record the info quick enough, they don't need to listen to the entire message again.

My brother spent a decade hating DS2. I talked him into taking another crack at it with me recently, and once I explained Adaptability to him, the game went from "compete bullshit" to "mostly bullshit."

I think if you marry young, it starts at 1% and grows from there. My wife and I are approaching middle age, and we're only unknowingly taking to ourselves about 20% of the time.

Small indie film? Dear Zachary is a documentary produced on a shoestring budget, and it is an absolutely devastating piece of art. Just thinking about the film puts a lump in my throat.

This reminds me of a Joey Comeau story I saw published fifteen or twenty years ago. The narrator's wife had died, so he programed a computer to read her old journal entries aloud in her voice, at random throughout the day.

It was profoundly depressing and meant to be fiction, but I guess every day we're making manifest the worst parts of our collective imagination.

Many states have closed primary elections prior to the general election. So three or four candidates from the same party are campaigning against each other for the right to be the candidate in the general election, and the only people that can vote in this preliminary election are registered party members.

I've literally had my home broken into and stuff stolen from it. It was the one time in my life that I ever called the police. They trampled through my place, made a mess and broke more things, and then decided I was reporting a suspicious amount of electronics and accused me of trying to do some kind of insurance fraud.

Fuck cops.

Hard disagree on the jump button. That thing has fundamentally altered how I play so heavily that I struggle going back to Dark Souls games.