Every cat is different. I’ve had grumpy cats that love belly rubs and I’ve had friendly cats that only want ear and chin rubs, you touch anything lower than their spine and they recoil away before slinking back for more ear rubs.

Be pedantic as you want, steam makes no bones about it being 30%.

And unlike other marketplaces, Steam doesn’t demand exclusivity. If anything they encourage publishers and developers to put their content on other storefronts or other alternatives that are available. Unlike, say Origin, Epic Games or what ever the hell Ubisoft was trying to.

Steam taking 30% may seem steep but they do a lot of support for developers in addition to the largest PC marketplace out there, complete with built in communities around new games where developers can directly interact with players of their game(s.) As long as the game works as advertised, Steam has historically done very little to penalize or inhibit developers on the market place. And nearly every case of it that has come to light has been admitted to be a mistake and rectify, such in the case of Hatred, or has been transparent about a third party stopping short of legal action, such as in the case of the Mastercard censorship scandal.

Compare that to Epic Games, who provides basically no support to developers, no community features or anyway to connect with other people who enjoy that specific game or those like it, and actively spies on users and is somewhat infamous for downloads servers to sporadically go down or corrupt a game require multiple attempts to ensure the product works. All while taking 12%

Steam isn’t perfect, they’ve screwed stuff up and missed a few bad actors in their midst before, but overall they are very pro-consumer and provide an open and fair platform where indie games can get showcased on the front page of the store as much if not more so than AAA games with million dollar advertising campaigns. Many of those indie games never would have seen the light of day without steam.

Steam is basically today what Netflix was in the late 00s/early 10s. A massive collection of content for people to enjoy that actively opposed the idea of exclusivity or preventing other. Where Epic is actively trying to push gaming to where Streaming is today by trying to bribe publishers and developers with better deals and kick backs if they agree to put their game on EGS exclusively for 6 to 18 months if not permanently.

The owner of the marketplace has the right to charge merchants who sell their goods in a safe place provided by the owner, especially when the market itself is delivering and garunteeing the product works.

So yeah, Valve takes more than other companies, but unlike say Epic Games valve is actually making sure the devs deliver a working product.

Rule one of fascism is never giving your opponent credit for actual actual victories unless they can be tainted.

This is all legit blow outs against their ideology and the money backing it. They can’t taint it meaningfully without overstepping or revealing how corrupt they are.

That’s just geographical politics. People raised in urban environments slant leftist because they are exposed to people living in preventable suffering and see how small acts at community level can meaningful improvements to the lives of less fortunate.

On the other side you have people raised in rural environments who either don’t regularly see the less fortunate suffering, or if they do it’s presented as self inflicted. The people suffering are lazy, unmotivated or just careless and splurge on recreation rather than requirements. Shows of wealth are common and celebrated while any form of charity is not targeted at local impoverished but rather somewhere abroad where no is going to see the result (all to often so it can be taken out of view and embezzled.) So youth raised in these environments slant right because they are being taught that anyone who works hard and commits themselves to living properly will get ahead, when the reality is everyone who is getting ahead is well connected and the hardest workers in the community are often the exploited working class who struggle to put meals on the table for their families.

Hold up, vice president headshots died? Howd I miss that?

The Republicans, with majority control of all three branches of government, have proven themselves inept, incompetent, irresponsible and generally incapable of successfully governing? Surely this is just a one time thing and not part of a continuing cycle that has repeated itself numerous times through the lifespans of the same voters who elected them! /s

That should just go without saying. No female athletes, just oiled up twinks and gym bros frolicking in a field naked for weeks. /S

Because North Korea did it and anything a dictator does he wants to do to.

More than you’d think. Any facilities that need 24 hour coverage like medical, care and of course corrections. All of which have in common the staff really don’t want to spend an extra 10-20 minutes waiting for a 20s something to show up and take offense when called out. And in my experience these 20s somethings hate any reason for them to be kept late at work.

If it’s shift work and someone is waiting on you then arrive so they can go home or start to work and a team its a big deal cause you’re wasting someone elses time.

Stupid, legacy calculus but calculus none the less. During the Cold war both sides recognized that a direct or near direct hit on a launch site could potentially negate any chance for retribution or follow up attacks in an otherwise limited/not all out scenario. So they counted the delivery mechanism they could identify, did some multiplication to account for misses and defenses and came up with a number. Then the other side noticed the build up, comes up with same general calculus and runs the same general math to decide how many they need. And this the goes back and forth for decades where each side is building up counters to their rivals counters. And the numbers we have now are actually a reduction from the peak of the Cold war build up.

Unless I’m mistaken Russia has way more nukes than the US still.

Huh, well keystrokes for later

To that person. Huh? Nearly every interplanetary launch has been using a gravity assist to save fuel despite such journeys taking much longer

Doesn’t matter how this administration spins it, we aren’t going to condone them fucking teenage girls.

Oh bother.

Israel had no justification to seize the flotilla and has yet to even pretend to have evidence they acted appropriately. It’s incredibly frustrating the international community is doing nothing.

The number of online dms I hear complaining about flight speed races and flight spell boggles my mind. You just got licence to make 3d puzzles and encounters. And also show those players why spiders in magic the gathering had the ability to defend against flying creatures through out the 90s

Last campaign I ran the paladin was so proud of herself for smiting down a couple lesser demons and gushed about it for the rest of the week. So for the next 3 arcs of that campaign I snuck in a cambion who was hounding the party and got his lights clocked in multiple times just knowing the dopamine release it gave that player even when every ‘challenging’ encounter crafter for that group was done in about 5 terms and took me nearly and hour to craft ahead of time.

To me as the DM it’s your job to learn what quirks or functionality of the players particularly enjoy about their characters and find a way to sneak in encounters, puzzles or situations that give that player time to shine and enjoy it. Even and especially if it trivializes the challenge you put into it.