I honestly don’t understand how there isn’t some kind of Waterworld… either action/fps mmo, ala destiny or warframe… or just some kind of mount and blade type single player game, or even Conan Exiles.

The closest thing I can even think of is Raft - Stranded Deep.

… Its mad max… on the ocean, and is basically postapoc/dieselpunk.

Bang wow zoom, fairly novel game (by modern standards) for a AAA or even AA studio to try.

explodes into orange juice

… Sorry, you failed your perception check as well.

As you pull out the ‘bomb’…

You are startled to discover it is actually two ramen noodle packs, each of which has slightly torn packaging, out of which a bit of crumbled dehydrated noodle bits leak.

… There are a lot of domain specific, contextually distinct ways one could interperet what you just said.

Could you be more precise?

I can think of at least two, totally different, practically opposite in meaning, ways of interpreting your comment, off the top of my head.

Oh, sure, a 23 yo intern and some VC bro fuckwad yeah, ok, yep, no security clearances whatsoever but fuck it, they just have Q clearance level access now, they just have SIPRnet access, their own accounts.

We already know other members of Elon’s parade of imbeciles at DOGE can’t even fucking figure out how to not expose their own remote logins to other government systems, and they’ve been getting those accounts hijacked by IP addresses in fucking Moscow already.

What could possibly go wrong?

DOGE continues to be the grandest scale, most insane, ongoing ‘cybersecurity event’/‘treason’ in history.

If anyone other than these fucks, in this exact situation, were doing this, they’d be getting black bagged by people who don’t exist and sent to facilities that don’t exist… possibly to many seperate facilities, at the same time, in many pieces.

I don’t even know what to say other than to drop into Tom Clancy lingo and say these fascist morons are actual clear and present dangers that warrant sending the guys that you’d send to go after the Rainbow Six guys if one of them goes rogue.

This is the Garry’s Mod version of GMan waltzing and trapezing into Black Mesa with a hoard of T posing Kleiners with physguns stuck in their crotches flailing about behind him, and then giving the two Kleiners that didn’t accidentally kill themselves by flinging props around, giving two of them just direct access, personal, remote log ins to, uh, the trunk lines set aside for for only secret, top secret, and all kinds of compartmentalized classifications levels of info.

Gman’s employers could be mapping out the network as we speak, spreading out laterally and trying to figure out ways to embed themselves with persistent presence.

jfc.

Oh weird, I misread that as public being skeptical of the idea of Elon’s life expectancy projecting forward beyond Q4 2025.

Hah!

What a silly mistake I made!

Yep.

This means the 4th Amendment is dead.

Oh, any LE agency wants to search your house? Your car?

Uh, hrm, which very vaguely suspected migrants live in your building, your neighborhood?

2 miles away? Whatever, close enough.

Ok, now you’ve got ICE at your door, on the flimsiest evidence, connected in the flimsiest way, to a person suspected on a different set of flimsy evidence…

… And they are just searching your place because random guy may have been in the area, might have burgled you, whatever, who cares, we’ve got a warrant, lots of guns, do not interfere with our investigation.

Have… have we all learned yet, by now, that basically 90% of managers and bosses are literally idiots who only understand buzzwords, vaguely, uselessly?

… Their jobs are easier to automate than ours.

Reminder that during Covid, Elon bought a bunch of CPAP machines (for sleep apnea), sent these to various hospitals, claimed he sent them ‘respirators’, and then claimed it was a conspiracy against him personally when hospitals told him ‘these are not respirators, they will not work, we cannot use them’.

That sounds very much like certain white trash family members in my family/extended family, and family of neighbor kids I grew up with.

Utterly shit people who have objectively fucked up or failed at nearly every opportunity ever presented to them, never seek out or attempt to create their own opportunities… but also somehow just infinitely smug and self confident about basically just random unremarkable nonsense details of their lives.

And of course, are never wrong about anything and are literally incapable of genuine introspection.

I mean, I’d appreciate it!

The entire history of the phrase ‘wrong side of the tracks’ also comes to mind.

They would all arrive at the market and insist on being able to open carry slung AR15s, and then be utterly baffled by the concept of a weapons check.

Like… even in ‘the West’ (yeehaw cowboys West) it was pretty common to have a weapons check at bars… because they quickly learned that if you don’t do that, well, patrons don’t enjoy the risk of getting their balls blown off while trying to throwback a shot of whiskey, because two other idiots nearby got into a fight.

Literally the fabled Tombstone, AZ, did this, as a city wide ordinance.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/gun-control-old-west-180968013/

Gun control is older than almost half the states in the union.

IIRC:

It was an aerial, or highly elevated shot of an extremely wealth district of high rise apartments and condos in… Brazil I think?

Seperated by a giant fence with a favela on the other side.

And then labelled something to the effect of ‘this is your brain on communism’ or whatever.

EDIT: Something like this, I think:

Rio de Janiero.

Schrödinger’s tariffs, you don’t know what the tax rate is till it arrives at port!

Damn, my shipment of cats is all dead, this time, SAD!!!

aheheh…

Coming Soon!

Watch This Space!

sped up timelapse shot of giant billboard decaying

Another second or third order effect, depending on exactly how you class it:

Lots of smaller, more specific product segment oriented businesses?

Well, the smart ones ordered a bunch of supply at the end of last year or beginning of this year.

Which means their smaller ware and storehouses are fuller than normal.

Which means they… assumed demand would more or less remain steady.

Which means they took a big expense some months ago, maybe covered it with a loan.

Which means the Q4 24 and Q1 25 quarters are actually pulling forward from the rest of the year, which means we will actually GDP fall from… the baseline prior to that, not after that.

… And if when the economy generally tanks, and demand falls through the floor…

Well, some of them will survive.

But many won’t.

Even though they did the arguably smarter thing, they’ll still have to cut hours, do lay offs, even though the bosses told their workers that they didn’t get a Xmas bonus… so that they wouldn’t have to lay them off or cut their hours.

…

Beyond that, remember when the Ever Given got stuck in the Suez?

And… if you knew anyone in logistics… shit was back ordered and fucked up and people were paying premiuma for priority shipping that was still late, and dock processing times were fucked because everyone kepr changing plans last minute?

Oh just multiply that level of chaos by 100 or 1000 or so.

Nbd rofl.

…

… As someone with a basic Econ degree, I always find it hilarious how often the highly praised and glorified ‘small business owner’… is actually pretty much ignorant of most basic economics.

What is it, 95% or 99% of small businesses fail within the first year? Just like how 99% of Youtubers or Tiktokers or OnlyFans people make essentially no money?

At least succesful Youtubers / streamers are generally aware of the fact they’ve won the lottery.

Small business owners on the other hand are usually the most self righteous ass hats I ever meet: We’re a abusive family business!

(though there are of course exceptions to that)

Nobody bothers to look into any of that though, oh well.

Gotta say, I love the idea of a private company being called ‘PublicSquare’… and the irony of this utterly whooshing over the heads of literally everyone involved.