Yes. The story here is straight from Associated Press, but I looked around and found a few more details in a Telegraph article:

But he woman’s doctor told police that the defendant had tested positive with a rapid test before telling him that she “certainly won’t let herself be locked up” after the result.

Instead she left her apartment and talked to people without a mask, ignoring her mandatory quarantine and positive test.

Note they say MANDATORY quarantine. At the end of the article they explain that Austria’s far right party, Freedom Party, is hyper-anti-vax, expected to win upcoming elections:

Its manifesto has promised a pardon for anyone convicted of breaching coronavirus rules and to repay any fines imposed during the pandemic.

The manifesto says coronavirus regulations were encroachments on fundamental rights “accompanied by unprecedented indoctrination and brainwashing.”

IMO, all voting should be on paper so that a hand recount can be done if the machines are questioned.

Myst can be a bit esoteric, especially the older versions.

Did they rewrite it in later ports? Also curious as to where you stand on Zork.

That particular exit poll APnews was reporting on was just for one polling place, so it doesn’t mean much, but yes, it was an opposition campaigner.

That said, we shouldn’t have to speculate. All the votes should be available for review – at least for voting centers where the results are in dispute.

On the other hand, we’ve been seeing that ‘big money’ wants the opposition to win because Maria Machado (the opposition leader who was kept off the ballot) “—derided by the Chavista leadership for her pro-market views and her upper-class background” —has promised pro-business changes.

Yeah, not only did they prevent the actual opposition leader from running, they’ve really made the vote count look suspicious. From APnews :

The official results came as a shock to opposition members who had celebrated, online and outside a few voting centers, what they believed was a landslide victory for González.

“I’m so happy,” said Merling Fernández, a 31-year-old bank employee, as a representative for the opposition campaign walked out of one voting center in a working class neighborhood of Caracas to announce results showing González more than doubled Maduro’s vote count. Dozens standing nearby erupted in an impromptu rendition of the national anthem.

Authorities delayed releasing the results from each of the 30,000 polling booths nationwide, promising only to do so in the “coming hours,” hampering attempts to verify the results.

After finally claiming to have won, Maduro accused unidentified foreign enemies of trying to hack the voting system.

In this particular case, Reuters seems to be pushing the narrative that there’s a Border Crisis.

The dominant players in the illicit opioid trade – the Mexican cartels that manufacture most of the drugs and smuggle them into America– have been the subject of detailed reporting over the years. Now, as the first news organization to buy and test fentanyl’s essential ingredients, Reuters has penetrated the hidden sub-industry that makes the cartel operations possible: the international supply chain of precursor chemicals.

For comparison the Fort Worth Star-Telegram reports:

Nearly three-fourths of those caught attempting to smuggle fentanyl into the U.S. since October 2022 were U.S. citizens, and they brought in more than half of all fentanyl seized by U.S. authorities, the officials said.

– but you’ve been to a 7-11, right? They are franchised, so maybe you have a good one, but some are rather sketchy. Though, to be fair: the super sketchy one a town over actually closed down before covid, so I may be painting with too broad a brush.

Yay!!!

I can’t get myself to click a twitter link, so in case others feel the same, here’s an alternate piece that basically says the same thing (I can’t yet find an article with detailed info): https://www.ign.com/articles/bethesda-game-studios-microsoft-game-studios

i’m chilling slo mo to Potion Craft: Alchemist Simulator. No adrenaline needed.

I misunderstood regarding those games, sorry.

See? That’s the thing. I don’t want to support future in-app purchases that get tacked on after they got me to PAY THEM for the ‘privilege’ of doing their beta testing for them. That seems like a special kind of evil that must not be encouraged.

I don’t understand how anyone buys Early Access games. Yes, I understand that the creators need to make a living before the game launches, but big companies should have the reserves and small companies may just take the money and run.

A couple days ago I looked at pcgamer’s summer steam deals list, and since Manor Lords topped the list I went over to Steam to check it out. Early Access. Nevermind.

I forgot about it entirely until looking at this article. Went to Steam and: Oh. Right. Early Access. Nevermind.

I do agree that it is too early to expect more updates. It only became available in April. I don’t expect it to have improvements worth integrating yet. That said, I’m not spending $30 (regular price $40) on something that may or may not end up being any good – that might always be too buggy to play, or too cringe-y to enjoy, or go so far from the initial demo that it isn’t the same game (I will never forgive you, Spore, and I will never buy you).

I agree! And I’m thankful that lots of games build that in.

I hate using AWSD as direction keys. I don’t understand why some games refuse to map the arrow keys to the same commands, but some don’t and it becomes up to me to manually set that right before playing anything.

It irritates me so much to me that if a game doesn’t let me change the key mappings, I’m probably going for a refund rather than play at all.

The warning message said the port was not open, but my guess is that the message was inexact. I doubt the port was ever restricted at all. In fact – and with no evidence one way or the other – it wouldn’t surprise me if the only issue was my old video card and the ‘port’ error was simply the first error message the game found on initial launch. For my theory to make sense, though, some initial setup piece must have completed on 1st launch such that the 2nd launch had a newly made config file or something and that extra piece let me proceed to a more accurate error.

Ooooh, I’d like that! Well, there’s 3 parts to the (random user input / scripted game output) conundrum:

1. I think it is fair that if you ask, ‘Why didn’t you say something?’ the NPC might either respond as if it is being accused of sabotage, answer the damn question, lie, or prefer not to talk about it (it’s personal).
2. I’d keep a short list of standard options – probably in a collapsed scroller kinda thing so you could either verbally say or type whatever you want, OR you could click an arrow to pick from a list. That way lazy or stuck players wou;dn’t have to think of all the options, and players interested in roleplaying could do as they please.
3. I’m OK with, “I’m not going to respond to that”. I’d hope each character had several variations of that, but I think it is legitimate for NPCs to dislike being pestered. Shopkeepers might have replies like, “Are you gonna buy something or are you just here to bend my ear?” or “I don’t see how that relates to my inventory.” Random townies might reply, “Do I even know you?” or “Would you PLEASE stop bothering me.” or “You’re harshing my mellow, man. Shhhh… Just chill.”

It is probably easier. I used to run a program that ran its own mini server-like process to send input to other open programs. It used local ports. It didn’t need internet, but it did need ports. My first guess is that programmers already know a bunch of dev libraries that deal with ports so it is easier to use that than write something else from scratch.

NOTE: I just downloaded the game and on my first attempted launch, it complained that the port it wanted was not open. My only option was to close the game. I ran netstat and did not see the port listed, so I tried again. THAT time, it complained about my older video card :-/ The warning is clunky and there’s a typo, too (within -> withing). It says (if I transcribed accurately):

You are using an: NVIDIA GEOFORCE GTX 1080. This video card is currently not recognized withing the recommended specs. We only support a limited amount of NVIDIA GTX graphics cards, all NVIDIA RTX graphics cards or all AMD RX graphics cards since the local AI requires a lot of performance.

So please note that the game might not work properly. Refer to the Steam guide for more information.

When I closed that warning, the game loaded.

NOTE: I just downloaded the game and on my first attempted launch, it complained that the port it wanted was not open. My only option was to close the game. I ran netstat and did not see the port listed, so I tried again. THAT time, it complained about my older video card :-/ The warning is clunky and there’s a typo, too (within -> withing). It says (if I transcribed accurately):

You are using an: NVIDIA GEOFORCE GTX 1080. This video card is currently not recognized withing the recommended specs. We only support a limited amount of NVIDIA GTX graphics cards, all NVIDIA RTX graphics cards or all AMD RX graphics cards since the local AI requires a lot of performance.

So please note that the game might not work properly. Refer to the Steam guide for more information.

When I closed that warning, the game loaded.

I prefer more casual games, but I do like Slay the Spire. I don’t think I’ve tried to get past A4. I got bored with it a while back and downloaded expansions. I LOVE Downfall and kinda like PackMaster, too. If I am feeling lazy, I will do a custom run and pick my starting cards, and choose ‘slow’ and ‘big game hunter’ options as well. It makes me overpowered, but – again – is enjoyably casual for a change.