The sad thing is that at the beginning he had a little tiny bit of justification for not liking what WP Engine was doing.

What WP Engine was doing was completely legal. They were completely following the requirements of the WordPress license. But, it was true that they could have done more to benefit the WordPress community. Instead, they were building a huge, quarter-billion dollar business based on WordPress without either helping pay for its development or contributing meaningful code themselves.

A competent project leader could have used the goodwill they’d amassed over decades to mount a subtle pressure campaign to get WP Engine to do more. But, instead, his approach has somehow made a private equity backed for-profit company to almost appear to be the “good guy” in this fight.

affecting

horse

I don’t think Canada could do much of anything to stop a US invasion. OTOH, I don’t think America could do anything to stop Canadian guerillas after an invasion.

Imagine trying to stop a population that is essentially indistinguishable from your own citizens, in a country where your own citizens are allowed to walk around carrying essentially the same rifles used by the armed forces. And that’s not even considering that probably half the US would be on the side of the guerillas.

If you work for Facebook, you almost certainly have options. Choosing to continue to work there means you value your stock options more than you value being a good person.

Are you trusting that what the cops said happened is what actually happened?

It was always bad.

Windows 3.1 was bad. It was ugly, it was slow. The Macs of that era looked better, although their multitasking was even worse than Windows, somehow. It was pretty clear that 3.1 was just a desktop GUI over a text OS.

Windows 95 and 98 were bad. They were graphical improvements over 3.1 / NT, but they were so brittle and janky. Remember bullshit like “TEXTFI~1.TXT”?

The latest versions are all terrible too. Like, try to make a change to a system setting and you get the Windows 10/11 themed settings menu. But, if you try to make any kind of advanced setting change and you’re taken over to a GUI that shows that under the hood it’s still effectively running Windows XP components.

There’s no bigger hero than Private Major.

She’d be tighter with some Mapple Syrup in the oil system.

I don’t know, I doubt it.

Please stop bending over backwards for the corporations.

Who’s bending over backwards?

The customer shouldn’t have to control the taxi when they’re calling for emergency support like this

I agree. The car also shouldn’t drive in circles around a parking lot, but here we are. In that situation, you do whatever works. If the fastest or easiest way to resolve the problem is to do something with the app on their phone, then so be it. It does no good to complain about what the solution should be when you’re trying to resolve that. Save that for later once the problem has been resolved.

He was on his way to a flight. Flights are expensive.

Yes, and again, that’s something to address after you fix the problem. Stop interrupting the person who’s trying to help you to ask about compensation for a flight you haven’t yet missed (and probably won’t miss) rather than just do what they say to resolve the problem.

He has no idea for how long he’s going to be continually going in circles

But, it’s going to be a lot longer if he keeps interrupting and bringing up the cost of his flight rather than just doing as the person trying to help him asks.

This is a customer in distress

No, this is a guy trying to make a viral social media post, who obviously cares more about an exciting story than trying to fix the situation. If he cared about fixing it, when the agent asked him to bring up the waymo app on his phone he’d have done it. Instead, he needed to keep his phone in hand so he could keep recording for social media.

Waymo comes out of this looking incompetent, as they should. But, this guy didn’t do anything to make the situation better.

How did he not allow them to help?

He kept talking over the woman who was trying to help. He brought up his flight about 3x. When she asked him to bring up the Waymo app he pushed back rather than just doing what she asked.

He’s right that it’s dumb if he has to use his phone to do something. But, if she thought that would work, why not try it? I suspect the reason he didn’t want to do that is that he was using his phone to record his social media post, and was more concerned with getting his viral post ready vs. trying to actually resolve the situation.

This doesn’t make Waymo look good. Their car getting stuck looping a parking lot is ridiculous. The passenger not having an obvious button to push to get the car to immediately stop (or find a safe place to pull over and stop if it’s on a highway or something) seems like a big oversight too. The person answering the phone also didn’t seem to know how to handle the situation either. Like, this seems like one of the primary things someone on support should know how to do: stop the car and let the passenger get out if there’s a problem. But, she seemed to be fumbling to find a solution.

Having said that, the guy seemed to be making the situation worse instead of trying to resolve it and get to the airport.

I haven’t used Critical Roles new systems but I assume they could get a big switch over if they push it hard

It’s launching sometime in 2025, so we’ll see how hard they push it when it’s ready. So far, they’ve only hinted at it. I don’t know if they’d want to do this, but they could also try to convince other smaller (but still big) streamers to use it too. There are some streamers they’re pretty close with (the Dropout guys for example) and others who they’re on friendly terms with (like Penny Arcade’s guys).

If WotC / Hasbro wanted to mount a charm offensive to get people to keep using D&D, I don’t know how influential they are. Other than Chris Perkins, I can’t think of any well known D&D employees at all.

“Spins in circles” makes it sound like the car was drifting, when it was just doing laps around the inside of a parking lot. Also, this guy starts talking about them “taking care” of his flight when this has been happening for what, 5 minutes? I get that it’s annoying, but if 5 minutes circling a parking lot would have made him miss his flight, he’d also have missed it if there was even a hint of bad traffic. He also doesn’t even allow the customer service person to help him.

Also, the screen in the car has a “pull over” button on it. I guess he missed that? Or, maybe he hit it and it was stuck in a loop trying to find a safe place to pull over? It seems to me that a software button on a touch screen isn’t good enough though. They should have a physical big red button that a passenger can’t miss and can hit if something is going wrong. But, that’s just me.

this is just a denial that anarchist and communist societyies function

They don’t. There has never been a communist or anarchist society that has functioned for an extended length of time as its own sovereign entity.

No, it isn’t. You’re so very smart.

I think what might be different this time is influencers. If Critical Role abandoned D&D completely, I think they’d probably stay popular and whatever system they switched to would get a lot of attention. I also think that they’d be likely to use a system that isn’t math heavy, and allows for a lot of role playing and acting.

The problem would probably be splintering. But, if a tiny company like Paizo made such a big impact on the D&D ecosystem with virtually no ad money back in the 3.5 days, just imagine what could happen today when so many D&D influencers exist. If they worked together on something, it could be a major change to the D&D ecosystem.

Moscow has survived attacks from France. Every viable political/economic system has to be able to defend itself. I hope you realize how ridiculous your argument is by giving an example of something that lasted just barely 2 months. That’s like claiming that a perpetual motion machine exists by showing some swinging pendulum for 10 seconds.

A merger, not a takeover? That’s a step in the right direction.

I assume if a merger happened, the combined boards would realize that the sanely run part of the combined corporation was based out of Ottawa, and would “right-size” the Washington DC parts. The US supreme court clearly isn’t fit for purpose, so toss that and make the supreme court in Ottawa the official one post-merger. US lawyers would need to buy fancy robes.

Maybe the CIA could absorb CSIS and the NSA could absorb NSIS, but clearly the top law enforcement agency should be the mounties. FBI agents would have to learn to ride and get some nice tailored red suits.

The US house and senate would have to be dissolved. That incredibly corrupt 2-party duopoly is already the laughing stock of the world. This would also be the end for absurd things like the electoral college, multi-year campaigns, the “New Hampshire” primary, and so-on. But, we could keep the idea of electing the head of state instead of having a figurehead governor general who theoretically has the powers of a monarch, while also having almost no actual power. That whole thing is just weird.

Oh, and while we’re at it, it wouldn’t actually have to happen as the result of a merger, but this would be a good opportunity for the NFL to fix some of its rules. 3 downs instead of 4 is a big improvement, as is starting the offensive and defensive lines 1 yard apart. We could let them rename the “rouge”, but keeping that concept is essential. The whole idea of kicking into the endzone not being a point in the NFL is just silly.

K