See that's the problem, you live IN the city, and you're not afraid of the city, so you know how it really is.
I've gotten the "Parking is too expensive and hard to find" from friends when I try and get them to come into the city to hang out. No, come to my apartment, park in the plentiful free protected street parking right out front, and then we'll walk the 5 minutes to the center of downtown.
There are different ways of approaching doing something:
"To do X requires me to do this and that. So heres how I'll do this and that to get to X. "
"I can't do X because it requires me to do this and that. "
There's a big difference between the 2. The latter is a lie, they just don't want to do what is required to do that. Its a way of phrasing things so people don't feel bad and they don't have to admit they don't want to do something.
Start looking for it and you'll see it in a lot of exchanges.
Dinner + tip can easily reach $200 if you're talking about a fancy restaurant for date night, even with just a single drink each. $50 for parking is crazy, that's like a music festival price or something.
Of course, if you live in the kind of city where the above is true, then a very delicious dinner + tip can usually be had for $50-75, it just won't be as fancy.
You don't have to go to fancy restaurants for a date you know. Maybe for your anniversary. People who insist on fancy everything are probably not worth the trouble.
I'm in the bay area and dinner for two is absolutely nowhere close to $200 unless you are going somewhere fancy or ordering many drinks. Looking at my transaction history, it's closer to about $40 per person.
Hey no totally I agree, 15/sandwich is so much more than I remember and 12/drink is nuts. With inflation and cost of living here it’s like double what I remember from 2018 ‘burbs. I’m not trying to say it’s necessarily cheap.
But as someone lucky enough to be able to eat out almost every day at a variety of restaurants I have no trouble staying under 35/person without drinks. That place is not an outlier.
And like, fancy cocktails are nice but I don’t think you can say that it’s impossible to go out and do anything without spending $500 like OP claimed.
The super rich control the democrats too, I wouldn’t expect very much to change. They will focus on moving forwards not back, charge a few low level guys, and revert ~10-20% of what Trump has done.
It's not as if democrats are using the existence of the filibuster as an excuse to not even try. Putting forward legislation they believe in, even when the odds of it being passed are slim, demonstrates intent and if the filibuster is used to stop a law that would benefit the people, that means that someone was actively doing something, it's on record, and the people should hold the obstructionists accountable for what they prevented.
I can’t play it with people I know, after genuinely upsetting some friends in a backstab. With strangers meeting only for the game it feels a lot more expected and less personal
Political games - meaning, games with more than two players where you have wide discretion to help or hinder specific opponents - naturally bleed into real life. To have a loyal friend in these games who lets you win at their own expense, is a good strategy - you'll simply win a lot more games that way. Grudges carrying over from one game to the next becomes a natural part of play too - what else could dictate who you let win, if you end up in a kingmaker situation?
Politics has a habit of infecting everything. If you are determined enough to win, even games like Monopoly or Catan with relativelt modest political elements degenerate towards Diplomacy (or Nash's "So long sucker"). That's why in modern game design, designers try to limit the scope for politics to the absolute minimum, so that any game can be enjoyed in isolation without a metagame of grudges and off-table alliances.
My core group will backstab each other gleefully and when the game is over, that’s it. We’re done. Because none of this is real. We wouldn’t even help each other if we played with other people. We’re all trying to win.
Although I suppose you’re right. If I played with two people, and the role of one of them is simply to help the others game, I’d never play with them.
This hasn't really been my experience. We constantly used to gang up on a guy who was super good at this. Also he was an expert at tricking people into doing his bidding.
He really wasn't like that IRL.
Couples/brothers murdering each other is a common theme though.
Also, I remember I used to care way too much about nerd stuff like this. Nowadays I can't find the headspace, real life just kept creeping in.
> To have a loyal friend in these games who lets you win at their own expense, is a good strategy - you'll simply win a lot more games that way.
I think that's only true if your goal is to win. I play board games to have fun with friends and family, and winning every time - especially because someone else hands you a win - is no fun at all.
It just depends on the person I think, nothing inherently wrong with the fact that some people take it a bit personally, just don't invite them back. Personally I love root, but there are definitely people who are a little sensitive to play it with; it really has to be the type of friend who can see the humour in a good backstab.
But when you play a game and it turns out you don’t like it, you need to do your best not to bring it down for everyone. I don’t even mean you can’t criticise the game. Go for it. But find ways to have fun. I like thinking up outlandish strategies and trying to make it work.
No one needs 2 plus hours of their lives ruined because someone threw a hissy fit over a game which has no real life consequences. It’s probably not healthy if you can’t distinguish fact from fiction either.
What gets me is that I haven’t heard a reasonable explanation of exactly what the AI will do besides: nukes and biolabs we already have
& ofc AI is making climate change worse, some of the Amazon datacenters are using fossil fuels to generate a country’s worth of power, but that’s never part of their calculations
Viruses against humans, viruses against livestock as an attack against humanity's food chin, plant diseases, half of humanity feeds on three plants maize, wheat, rice. Attacks against infrastructure like water, internet, electricity.
Which one of these would it be? All of them in parallel? Or something we wouldn't think of. If I were to play chess against Magnus Carlsen, I wouldn't know with which piece he will checkmate me, but I know that I am going to lose.
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