Like the custom endocrine systems of combat sleeves in Richard Morgan’s Altered Carbon edit: I think I was thinking of Iain M Banks’ “Culture” series actually, but both are worth a read! Need to be strong or fast? Just give yourself a little squirt of adrenaline! Time for slow heart rate and low energy use? Slow-release a skoche of acetylcholine.

You make a good point about subscriptions. The repo when you stop paying would be pretty grim.

Training complete! Next challenge: fold this prion into a viable protein.

The Dark Tower series is pretty good for the first three or four books, the rest I couldn’t vouch for. I find a lot of his stories hit the same beats to the point that they feel formulaic, but his best-known works - the ones you’ve heard of over and over again - are all worth a read.

Also, if you’re looking for really long, really dense, really dark fantasy in a thoroughly rounded and meticulously crafted world, check out Steven Erikson’s Malazan saga. King does horror, Erikson does horripilation.

It’s like they all miss the “subject to final accounting and receipt of good funds”, even the reps they (claim to) speak to, as though that single phrase doesn’t show exactly what the issue is. I guess the magical legalese allows them to ignore whatever text is convenient at the time, conveniently.

Accurate. In order for this to stop the punishment needs to be more than the cost of doing business. Thankfully, Valve seem to be hell bent on doing right by their customers, in most cases at least (just to leave room for scandals I haven’t heard about or forgot 😅)

If you think that an arbitration company isn’t going to end up sympathetic to the people signing their cheques after some amount of time in operation, I’m afraid I have some bad news for you. Even if the loser pays (and that’s not a guarantee, some companies foot the bill regardless to make it seem like the better option to the consumer), it’s still the company contracting the arbitrators and the consumer doesn’t get a look in on that, so future business is absolutely an incentive to put the thumb on the scale. “After all, both parties agreed to be bound and waive their right to trial, so what are consumers going to do?” is the logic. Most will drop it after losing arbitration, and there are savings on court costs there too.

I don’t assume arbitration wraps up in any arbitrary amount of time (🥁). I say it’s quicker than litigation because it is, every single time. Because it is quicker it is also cheaper, every single time. Small claims court is different again, and not at question here, just to head that off at the pass.

You however do assume a lot like my location and the location of the suit I brought though, based on my vernacular, and I’d recommend against that. “Mate’s rates” could put me in the UK, or Australia, or New Zealand, or even some places in South Africa and other former colonies. None of those would be accurate.

If you push everybody into arbitration, you’ve already got the arbitrator in your pocket and your costs will still be less than litigation in 99% of cases - even class action. I don’t think you understand just how long and expensive and unpredictable litigation can actually be, but I’ve brought suit before so I do. It took four and a half years to get an initial court date from first filing the complaint. Not the trial, just a date so the judge could hear the facts of the case and opening statements from attorneys. Four and a half years of paying my attorneys, as a private individual, with a lot less money than you might think. And they were giving me mate’s rates; I’ve worked with companies where the legal work billings were in the tens of thousands per day for a single participating law office. That shit is expensive.

Maybe Valve did this to fuck their customers, but they don’t really have a track record of that, and since in the majority of cases arbitration is without question an anti-consumer move, I’d say that if your aim is to paint Valve to be the villains for this then it’s going to be an uphill battle.

Arbitration is always cheaper and faster than the courts, because the courts are very backed up especially since the pandemic, and there’s a lot of admin cost which doesn’t exist in arbitration. That is why almost every other company is trying to force arbitration. So if the goal was to save money, forcing court would have the opposite effect.

Hey hey, you’re an honorary American now! Your flag and genocide kit are in the mail (don’t worry, we’re pretty sure we got the right address from that darkweb database).

But for real there’s not much you can do but keep an eye on it. If Europe has similar credit agencies to the ones in the US, then freeze your credit and keep it frozen until you need to apply for more (new card, car, house, etc).

Use a password manager so if an account gets compromised they can’t get into anything else.

And, as advised, watch for unusual activity (but forever, not just a few months, that’s just a false sense of security).

This should keep you largely safe. My data has been leaked in dozens of breaches, but I do the above, and while I’ve had two instances of card fraud, I don’t see hard enquiries into my credit that I didn’t make even after 6+ years.

“Free Taco Bell” is the name of the GoFundMe for your legal defense because you got arrested for protesting the war after class

Follow it up with

Thanks, Taco Bell

And lean into Taco Bell being your new nickname. Easy.

If he’s decided to block reporting on it, it’s real.

Yeah, but I’m far more articulate than those things ever were which is what makes it so insulting >:[

Au contraire, mon ami - they’re trying to kill anyone, it’s just a higher chance to get a kid in a school zone.

Source: the intersection down the road from me.

My Gul isn’t very friendly at all, he keeps trying to genocide pastoral societies, is he broken?

I was gonna say cunt, but you’re right that he lacks the warmth and depth, so yeah - this one!

I didn’t know it could turn your desktop into a toy, I thought it was more like all those other wallpaper apps which just “help” you switch between images. Have you found the live wallpapers to be much of a battery drain on Android?

Rua must never have worked tech support. I’ve been accused of being a robot more times than I can count, years before ChatGPT was even a thing.

Ooh, ooh, do Capitalism For The Middle Class next!

Okay, that’s pretty sick. Looks way cooler than MKBHD’s thing, sounds like that only does static images. I probably won’t use it on mobile (battery considerations) but on desktop…